FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Warning against using lastminute.com top secret hotels!!
Old Dec 12, 2015 | 4:57 am
  #86  
Bluebirdnick
10 Years on Site
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: London
Posts: 344
Originally Posted by SgtRyan
[In reference to suggestion that the OP contacts his credit card] I really dont know what to do. I have sent 2 emails to lastminute.com asking when can I expect a reply and they are just not responding. How can I file a dispute with the credit card company? What will that do? Not only have they not replied within the 28 days that they said they would, but to not even answer any other emails is just a joke
FWIW, a chargeback is the only language lastminute understand. I booked a top secret hotel in NYC. Two nights came to about £360. It was advertised as a "21% discount". Once the hotel was revealed, I compared the "top secret" rate to the non-cancelable rate offered by the hotel. The "top secret" rate was slightly more expensive than the non-cancelable rate. It did represent a 21% discount on the cancellable rate offered by Lastminute for an opaque booking, but that is irrelevant: a top secret room is non-cancellable, so the advertised 21% discount for booking an unknown hotel should be by reference to a non-cancellable rate.

I asked lastminute to credit me the difference between what I'd been charged, and what a 21% discount would actually represent. They refused to. I asked my credit card company for a chargeback of this amount (about £65). Beautifully, they said "no - it's blatant mis-selling" and recovered the full £360 charge. Net result was that I had two free nights in NYC, courtesy of Lastminute's daft approach. I also got to keep the £30-odd cashback from TCB for the booking.
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