At its best, travel is relaxing, enjoyable, and sometimes invigorating. At its worst, it can be frustrating, irritating, and needlessly expensive. My recent experience with Hotels.com was the latter. Here’s how it all went down:
Where it started: Saturday, May 12, 2012
12pm: My husband and I head out to Ithaca (about a 3 1/2-hour drive west) to attend an old friend’s wedding.
3pm: The car dies for the first time, less than an hour from our destination. We spend the next 3 hours trying to revive it, using every trick in the book…it doesn’t work.
6pm: We realize there’s no way we’re going to make the wedding, so we contact AAA to haul us back home, and we call the motel to cancel our reservation. We’re told by the motel to contact Hotels.com, as the reservation was done through them and are the only ones who can cancel it. We’re also told the cancellation fee will be the full amount of the reservation, since we’re canceling later than the 3 days on the cancellation policy. We are… not happy.
Where it all went (even more) downhill: Later that night
9:30pm: We finally get home and contact Hotels.com. They had cancelled our reservation, which is great, but they repeat that we would be charged the full $95 for a cancellation fee because that was the motel’s policy, and indicate there is nothing we could do about it. (At about this time I start thinking, “Really? Nothing? They don’t know me very well, do they?” Those poor suckers.) They say that if we want to have it escalated, we should send an email with a copy of our reservation to their customer service department (oh we do, we do!!). I send not only a copy of the reservation agreement (which didn’t have any information about a cancellation fee, natch) but a screenshot of the two relevant pages from Hotels.com’s website, neither of which say anything about how much the cancellation fee is (or even if there is one).
Where we are now: Wednesday, May 16, 2012
5pm: I receive a call from “Connie”, an agent at Hotels.com. We speak for an hour, going in circles around the same issue: My position is that there was no cancellation fee stated anywhere on the motel’s pages on Hotels.com’s website, so I should not be charged. “Connie”‘s position is that I should have “known” there was a fee, and that it would be in the amount of one night’s reservation (ESP, perhaps?). She says that because Hotels.com called the motel and were told that that was the cancellation fee AFTER we made our reservation, I should accept that as the motel’s fee. That somehow, because I didn’t call Hotels.com or the motel itself to confirm the amount of the cancellation fee when I made my reservation, I am somehow culpable and responsible for the fee.
Connie, Connie, Connie.
The end result of this conversation-from-hell was that she refused to help, and in fact said her/Hotels.com’s hands were tied – because what could a poor, defenseless multimillion-dollar company DO against a 2-star, individually-owned motel with a whopping 25 rooms? Poor Hotels.com, they are OBVIOUSLY the victim here. Since “Connie” seemed to be looking for options, and I like to be helpful, I suggested Hotels.com reimburse us for the $95 fee and in fact send us a letter indicating they would be looking into the motel’s incomplete cancellation policy. “Connie”, of course, indicated that they “don’t do that” and that it’s not Hotels.com’s fault that the motel had incomplete info (“They just rent our space! We didn’t even know they were there! There are hotels on our site? We had NO IDEA!” No, “Connie” didn’t say that, but she might as well have.) Poor “Connie” didn’t seem to understand the concept that their business is affiliated with these properties and as such, they bear some responsibility in the mind of the public when things go wrong. I ended by telling her I would be contacting my lawyer and the Attorney General of NY State.
Conclusion: The most frustrating conversation EVER. (And I used to do tech support, so I know from frustrating.)
Some key points the Hotels.com rep didn’t seem to grasp:
1. When two parties sign an agreement (which is what this was), it is not the responsibility of one of those parties to make sure the other party puts all the info they should in it.
2. It is not my responsibility to contact the property when they don’t protect themselves sufficiently on their Hotels.com page. If they don’t give a cancellation fee, then they have failed to sufficiently protect themselves in case of cancellation.
3. I do not, as a consumer, “assume” any specific amount might be charged me for a cancellation feel. It is also not my job to “understand” information that has not been provided to me, or “estimate” what I might be charged based on some vague “industry standard”.
4. Agreeing to one part of an agreement (the number of days I need to cancel by) does not implicitly mean I have agreed to another, unstated part of it (the amount I’ll be charged for the cancellation).
5. The average Hotels.com user is not going to go to the motel’s website to check any incomplete policies given by the motel in their Hotels.com page. It is the responsibility of the motel to make sure their policies are completely stated on their page, NOT my job as a customer to make sure I’ve looked in every possible spot for those policies.
6. Regardless of whether there is a cancellation fee given on the property’s private website, the information was NOT given in the arrangement I agreed to on Hotels.com’s website. I didn’t sign any agreement on the motel’s individual website.
7. Hotels.com has some responsibility when their properties give misleading, inaccurate, or incomplete information. They can then punish the property for such failings, but that’s between them and the property. I will not be punished because Hotels.com lacks oversight of their properties.
I am currently proceeding with a complaint to the Attorney General of New York State. I’ve also tweeted and posted Facebook updates about this, including “@”-ing to the appropriate parties (such as Hotels.com’s competition: Travelocity, Orbitz, and Kayak). If Hotels.com is unwilling to make this right, then perhaps one of their competitors would like a shot at it.
