Online Hotel Reservation Scams?
 

I think there's an internet scam going on, my buddy got hit w/ the same problem. You get to the hotel, and even though you made the various confirmations w/ the online company and hotel, they claim that the reservation is lost, etc... I made a big enough scene and enough phone calls to demand a free room, and they seemed very careful about hiding what's really going on -- but I can tell when something wacky is going on...

Anyone else have this problem? Anyway it's not a big deal -- I'm just going to have my bank take care of it... but you can imagine how fucking pissed I was... Actually I should probably do some more investigation and maybe take further action. Just wondering if anyone else had these problems and where it is safe to order online rooms through...

I know the problem. I haven't had it myself, but I hear it from plenty of other people. :BangBang:

Had it happen when we went for a few days to the French Alps recently. We ended up with an apartment for the same price as the room we booked as they had no record of the booking and all rooms were full, but it was touch and go for a while. Not so sure it's scams more just fucked systems.

Happens every time I travel. I end up having to sleep outside on rocks and broken glass.

Lemme tell ya a story.
A couple months ago... I went online to book a room at a respectable hotel downtown, so I could take my fiance' out for the night w/o any interferences. I booked a room, and confirmed it. I called to confirm at the hotel... they had no clue what I was talking about, and informed me that they were booked, and had no rooms available.

I canceled my online reservation, and it charged me $15.00.

Then I tried a different hotel... The same fucking thing happened!!!!! I called the hotel with my receipt and bitched them out, until they gave me a room.

This put me out approx. $700.00 for a few days until the credit showed up back on my card.

Needless to say, I will not book online anymore. It's more hassle than it's worth.

:2 cents:

<--- Calls Vegas to confirm his online booking.

:helpme

Yes, its happened to me too.
And on more than 1 occasion...

SCAM

TGITC

I think it all depends on who you use. I only use Expedia and have never had a problem in the 4 or so years I've used them. What I have noticed though is how the process actually works with middlemen that sell rooms. Sometimes it's not quite as high tech as we tend to believe. When you use your credit card to book a room, many times it doesn't go into the HOTEL'S reservation system, it goes into the third party's computer for them to process. Once your card goes through, they manually print up a reservation form that they fax over to the reservation department of the hotel in question. Here's where the problem comes in. Hotel employees normally don't give a fuck about their jobs. So say that fax goes over to the hotel on a Friday, but the fat ass in reservations is lazy and they may decide to process all the faxes that came over either Saturday or Monday. So if you had a reservation for Saturday, it may not be in the hotel computer if they didn't do their job. Also if the third party booking company takes their sweet ass time sending this fax over to the hotel it could cause problems. The only times I've had anything close to a problem, I've told the people at the front desk to either call and ask for the fax or to go to the fuckin back room and look on the machine, it's probably there.

Yeah that makes sense -- there's just extra steps now where your fax can get lost + it seems like these employees don't have the proper training to deal w/ the internet shit. A printed receipt would be nice so at least you aren't seen as some crook trying to get a free room by making up stories about the internet. The confirmation # I was given was not acceptable to the hotel -- the confirmation # was only good for the customer service line for the internet company to bitch about my fax being lost! (and I was put on hold for a long time and they weren't open 24/hours!)