Originally Posted by
moondog
I was burned twice by Agoda on prepaid rooms this year. The first time, the hotel offered me a windowless closet instead of suite I paid for. The second time, the Agoda booking never made its way to the hotel and no rooms were available. Agoda did try its best to appease me after the fact, but a lot of time was wasted in the process (i.e. hotel hopping at midnight isn't cool). I have NOT encountered similar with any ctrip bookings yet.
Same here. As hotels in China sometimes have BIG differences in pricing when either choosing a foreign TA (Ebookers, booking.com etc.) or a local one (Elong, CTRIP or the more obscure one's) I happen to "jump around" depending on what property. And so far, never got burned with the local one's, albeit their websites at time can be really crap. Hate the CTRIP interface.
However, with booking.com once had the experience that despite a guaranteed booking, the reservation somehow wasn't in their system. And with Ebookers, they charged me despite I cancelled the hotel in time. Both cases eventually got solved, but made me trusting local agencies more than foreign one's, which more often than not have no clue about the Chinese market (and are lacking language skills too)