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Accorhotels websites inconsistencies, scams, bugs and…I don’t know what else…

Accorhotels websites inconsistencies, scams, bugs and…I don’t know what else…

Old Apr 2, 2014, 12:12 pm
  #1  
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Accor website down?

Hello,

Unable to access accorhotels.com website since the last few hours.

The site is momentarily unavailable.
Please try again later. If you wish to book your hotel right away, please do not hesitate to contact our reservations department
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Old Oct 21, 2016, 4:27 pm
  #2  
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Angry Accorhotels websites inconsistencies, scams, bugs and…I don’t know what else…

I didn't want to post that in the thread about the website bugs because I think the topic is wider and deserves its own thread. Moderator : of course if you think differently, please move the thread.

I wanted to report here some interesting facts, with screenshots as support/proofs (sorry, they are in French, but I’m sure you’ll follow). All this is for a 2 nights booking in Phnom Penh in winter 2017. I want to precise that there is no difference if you are looged-in under your profile or not (tested). I need 2 rooms (1 double, 1 single). There are 2 Accor properties in PNH : Sofitel and Raffles, the latter not participating to LCAH .

Single Room
On the hotel selection page, are announced the cheapest rates from EUR 192 and 182 for the Sofitel and the Raffles, respectively.

Screenshot #1


Then, if you click on « see rates» :
- Sofitel : for the cheapest room, you see « book for EUR 525.67 » instead of the expected 2 x 192 = 384 (screenshot #2)

Screenshot #2


OK…it should be because the EUR 525 rate includes taxes. Screenshot #3 indeed indicates clearly that taxes (20.05%) are included. But…wait a minute : the price taxes included shoud be 384 + 20.05% = EUR 461. So either the 1st displayed price (192) is misleading, or they apply a 36.7% tax rate !!!

Screenshot #3


- Raffles : for the cheapest room, you see « book for EUR 364.90» (Screenshot #4). OK, this is consistent with the rate shown previously (2 x 182). So it seems that for Raffles, they show the rates without taxes and this is confirmed by looking to the rate details (Screenshot #5).

Screenshot #4


Screenshot #5


Double Room
After this interesting 1st exercise, let’s now look at the double room (same dates of course). Interestingly, screenshot #6 still shows the EUR 182 entry rate for the Raffles, but this entry rate has bumped to EUR 283 at the Sofitel (as compared to 192 displayed on screenshot #1 for a single occupancy). EUR90 more for just another person in the room ???

Screenshot #6


Then, if you click on « see rates » :
- Sofitel : for the cheapest room, you see « book for EUR 678 .99». But then I saw that it is for the « magnifique breakfast » rate (screenshot #7). Where is the regular rate ? NOWHERE TO BE SEEN , whatever the room category. We have already reported this bugs some weeks ago, but it is still there. So you can book only Magnifique breakfast, So Gourmet, So So… but not a regular rate.

Screenshot #7


When looking at the rate details, another interesting point is that the tax % issue I mentioned for the single room is not present here (Screenshot #8). The price displayed is correct : 283/night x 2 nights = 566 x 20.05% = EUR 679.

Screenshot #8


- Raffles : no difference with the single room, and this is somewhat logical as the breakfast is not included (Screenshots #9 & 10).

Screenshot #9


Screenshot #10


In summary :
- From one screen to another, you have prices without or with taxes. Confusing at best
- within the same group, in the same country, same city, for one hotel they give you rates including taxes (Sofitel) and for another it is excluding taxes (Raffles).
- Rates displayed are misleading (case of the single room at the Sofitel : the rate including taxes does not match the one before taxes)
- A persistent bug makes it impossible to book the Sofitel without taking a package with breakfast, dinner, etc

An interesting example of trying to confuse and rob the customer. No wonder why I booked non-Accor for this stay in PNH. This added to the Fairmont / Swisshotel story, I feel very sick tonight…

Last edited by Goldorak; Oct 21, 2016 at 4:51 pm
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Old Oct 21, 2016, 7:28 pm
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Cambodia is in asia, price quoted was exclusive of 20.05% VAT, and the price you saw was the price for accor plus member(which they get additional 10% discount)



i try a search today, price i got was 198 EUR, then i go in further i can see 475.45 EUR (this was inclusive of 20.05% tax)



then here are the breakdown of pricing
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Old Oct 22, 2016, 1:25 am
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Originally Posted by jiunsoh
Cambodia is in asia, price quoted was exclusive of 20.05% VAT, and the price you saw was the price for accor plus member(which they get additional 10% discount)
thank you for taking the time to respond and to have made a search, but you are not addressing my points. And you say I was shown Accor Plus members rates : what makes you say that ? And even if true, that's an additional problem because I am not an Accor Plus member, only LCAH. and the prices I shown are given whatever you are logged-in or not.
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Old Oct 22, 2016, 1:41 am
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I could not agree more with Goldorak. The website frequently misleads on rates.

Exhibit 1

When trying to book a €77 room

A massive change (and it is not down to tax).
I had asked Accor for an explanation but of course they claimed that this was not true.

They really should stop the "from €123" nonsense. What I want to know is what I am going to pay for the dates I entered. And of course this should not change during the booking process.

Also, since the latest "redesign" the rate overview is confusing to say the least.
The website is such a hot mess right now

Last edited by starflyergold; Oct 22, 2016 at 1:48 am
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Old Oct 22, 2016, 1:54 am
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Originally Posted by starflyergold

Also, since the latest "redesign" the rate overview is confusing to say the least.
The website is such a hot mess right now
That's my biggest complaint. The room-type listings given for clicking onto the individual hotels are rediculously large. I don't need the images to take up a large section of the screen; which causes one to need to continuously scroll down. Keep it simple.
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Old Oct 22, 2016, 4:44 am
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Thank you, Goldorak, for raising the issue. This has annoyed me for some time, too. Recently, I was looking for a hotel room at Novotel NYC but wasn't able to find the advertised price. I contacted the hotel and inquired explanation. This is what I got as a reply:

"These prices are the 'starting from' prices. They correspond to the lowest average price available on the dates requested, based on a room for one or two people. They may be based on different room types. Depending on the country, these prices may not include taxes, may include VAT only or may include all taxes (VAT and city tax). When prices do not include all taxes, the relevant taxes (VAT and/or city tax) will be stated in the following stages of the booking process. The price is only guaranteed at the time of reservation."

The difference between the advertised and the actual lowest price was so significant that I decided to book Airbnb instead. The advertised price was 229€/night but the actual lowest price was 316€/night, so the difference was 87€/night. For a five-night stay that made 435€.

Last edited by wkndtraveler; Oct 22, 2016 at 4:56 am
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Old Oct 22, 2016, 4:45 am
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The best is when you expect the highest rates for the biggest rooms the further you scroll down and suddenly you have some deluxe twin room at the bottom with a rate half the price of the deluxe king room that was at the top.
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Old Oct 22, 2016, 5:00 am
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Also, sometimes a lower category room is more expensive than a higher category room. However, the more expensive lower category room might still be listed before the cheaper higher category room so one need to check very carefully all room and rate types, bed types included.
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Old Oct 22, 2016, 6:18 am
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Agree with all the previous comments about misleading rates and odd pricing.

My favorite one is premium rooms being priced lower than basic rooms. Last year I was able to find premium rooms cheaper than base rooms for ALL of my Accor stays. Be sure to watch for it.
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Old Oct 22, 2016, 7:17 am
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Originally Posted by wkndtraveler
"These prices are the 'starting from' prices. They correspond to the lowest average price available on the dates requested, based on a room for one or two people. They may be based on different room types. Depending on the country, these prices may not include taxes, may include VAT only or may include all taxes (VAT and city tax). When prices do not include all taxes, the relevant taxes (VAT and/or city tax) will be stated in the following stages of the booking process. The price is only guaranteed at the time of reservation."

.
That's more or less what I was told as well when I raised my example (above). The problem is that is just not true. There was no room retailing at that rate on any day of my intended stay.

What it should say (and does with most competitors) is the average room rate for the intended period. I consider this borderline deception.
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Old Oct 22, 2016, 9:55 am
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I had something similar the other day when trying to book Novotel Glasgow.

The rates were all more than the "From" price displayed. I can't remember how much the difference was but it didn't seem to equate to the VAT amount.

It also kept jumping back into Euro from GBP which was annoying.
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Old Oct 22, 2016, 1:23 pm
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Originally Posted by wkndtraveler
Thank you, Goldorak, for raising the issue. This has annoyed me for some time, too. Recently, I was looking for a hotel room at Novotel NYC but wasn't able to find the advertised price. I contacted the hotel and inquired explanation. This is what I got as a reply:

"These prices are the 'starting from' prices. They correspond to the lowest average price available on the dates requested, based on a room for one or two people. They may be based on different room types. Depending on the country, these prices may not include taxes, may include VAT only or may include all taxes (VAT and city tax). When prices do not include all taxes, the relevant taxes (VAT and/or city tax) will be stated in the following stages of the booking process. The price is only guaranteed at the time of reservation."
Originally Posted by starflyergold
That's more or less what I was told as well when I raised my example (above). The problem is that is just not true. There was no room retailing at that rate on any day of my intended stay.
Indeed, this is not true at all. What I didn't mention in my 1st post is that, on the 1st screen (like screenshot #1), if you click on "find the best rate", my dates were displayed in green, meaning those were the dates with the cheapest rate available for the period.
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Old Oct 23, 2016, 1:30 am
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I have encountered these problems as well. In several cases (different locations, dates, hotels) the lowest price was not available for any room type considering taxes and fees. It must be the "lowest price ever available" at this hotel for the broom closet
I had cases were SOME taxes were included, others not.
I do think these are IT problems - a mixture of design and execution mistakes, resulting in sometimes different prices (with/without taxes) being displayed and sometimes inaccurate ones. This has been going on for a while, so I don't think anybody at Accor is giving this a lot of attention.
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Old Oct 23, 2016, 11:02 pm
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I wish the currency would remain stable. I start with my list of hotel choices in NZ$ (my home currency on .co.nz) and when I click to buy it becomes Euros because the booking is done on their European site, I suppose. I then have to check that the Euro rate is the rate I clicked in NZ$, which it often isn't because you have to reveal all the rates available for that room and not just the lead-in price (non-flexi, no breakfast etc).
Either childish attempts to squeeze an extra $ from me or incompetence. Charitably, I go for the latter as I can't believe Accor would bait and switch for NZ$10.
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