Thought I would share an amusing story that happened to my wife and I over the weekend. We were heading down to CT to visit family, and decided that we would stay at a hotel saturday night since my grandmother's house was going to be quite full with visitors. So I fired up Hotels.com and booked a room the closest reasonably priced hotel to my grandmother's house, the "Yankee Pedlar" in Torrington. Received a confirmation email from Hotels.com and figured we were all set.

Fast forward to satuday night around 10PM, we show up to the hotel and are surprised to find the hotel entrance boarded up with a sign posted on the board "Closed for Renovations, reopening Fall 2016". Puzzled, we call the number for the hotel on the reservation confirmation, and it's been disconnected. Checked their website and indeed it indicates that they are closed for renovations, guess I should have done more research before booking!

Luckily my grandmother's house wasn't as crowded as we were expecting and we were able to head back there and get a good night's sleep, but the whole thing left me quite confused. How had hotels.com confirmed our reservation with a hotel that is closed? I gave them a call on Sunday morning and after confirming that yes, indeed the number they have for the hotel is disconnected, they apologetically returned my money.

Before hanging up I asked the CS agent to make a note that I would like them to call or email me to explain how it happens that their system allowed them to book and confirm my reservation at a closed hotel, because I'm going to be pretty hesitant to book through hotels.com in the future unless i can understand how something like this could happen. Not sure I'll ever receive a response but figured I'd post this cautionary tale for everyone's amusement, I've certainly learned that I should follow up a confirmation email with a call to the hotel, in this case it wasn't a big deal but it certainly could have been.

If I hear anything from hotels.com about how this might have happened I'll update the thread, but I'm not holding my breath...