invisible

Imagine a situation: a hotel booked in far, far away country using CSP and well in advance - five month before the arrival. It was a pre-paid reservation which however did allow change of dates for small (appx $8) fee. Hotel is an independent one, not part of the chain, booking was done directly on hotel's website.

A month before the arrival change of arrival/departure dates was requested, which was confirmed via email and phone. It was said that change fee will be charged during checkout.

At the arrival it was discovered that the change was not propagated into the system and the only option was to re-purchase everything again on spot at four times the price of the original reservation. Talk to the manager was fruitless who said 'take it or leave it'. As a result, stayed at another place.

Question: what is the correct procedure to get money refunded back to the card? What is the right department to ask to talk to? Should it go fraud or under some other option?

rgAAFT

In my experience, it is almost impossible to get any sort of refund for a prepaid hotel rate. (try not to book them in the first place). Given this situation however, as I understand, your rate DID allow for date changes but that hotel did not honor that provision of the rate terms? In that case , I would file a charge dispute with Chase through the Dispute department and NOT the fraud department. One more thing, while Chase investigates, you won't be responsible for paying the charge in question
Hope that helps

Often1

CC dispute is the only way to go. Don't hold out much hope though, if the property can -- and likely will -- document your booking and its non-refundability.

You are then stuck with complaints to local consumer authorities at the "far, far away" place or a lawsuit.

rgAAFT

Also to help you, Chase will probably ask for any and all booking confirmations and policy documentation related to the charge. Therefore, I would go ahead and print that out. (especially the part that says date changes allowed at no additiona cost, as well as no rate difference payment required)

For what it's worth,
I know airlines/hotels often sell fares where date and time changes are allowed at no additional fee, however you are still responsible for the fare /rate difference between your old and new travel date. This may be the same type of thing.

MidnightLight

Try talking one more time to the hotel manager, and strongly hint that you will leave a very negative review if they don't issue you a full refund for the unused reservation. If it's a small hotel in a notable tourist destination, there's a decent chance that they will value their online reputation enough to settle with you. It's worth a try, at least.

If that doesn't work, then I agree a credit card dispute may be your only remaining recourse here (unless you happened to have purchased travel insurance?).

invisible

Does not CSP provide travel insurance as one of the benefits?

rgAAFT

Yes but with the exception of amex, usually these secondary benefits are a big PITA to claim and redeem . But, nonetheless it is possible

Soccerdad1995

You honored the terms of your agreement and the vendor did not provide the room that you had contracted. This seems like a pretty clear case for a CC dispute.

The additional complication here is that you changed dates (which was allowed per the terms of your contract with the hotel). Ideally, you will want to have a printout of the complete terms and conditions you agreed to, and also something documenting that the change was accepted by the hotel.

If the facts are as you have stated here, then the hotel's only hope is to dispute something about your claim (by saying either that the rate did not allow for changes or that you never requested a change). Otherwise it is very clearly a case of them not delivering the service that they sold.

As an aside, you might have had a better case if you had paid the rate demanded when you showed up to the hotel, using the same CC, then disputed the second charge by simply saying that the rate was prepaid via charge #1. That would have been a clearer paper trail and also would have avoided the aggravation of having to find another hotel at the last minute, etc.

Regardless of what happens, please leave a very negative review on TA and every other site, and also consider filing criminal charges for fraud against the owner of the hotel (may not do any good if his brother in law is the sheriff, but you should at least try).

rgAAFT

Well said
But I don't think your method of going about it by agreeing to pay for upsell and disputing that charge as invalid would work very well. For one thing if you did that and knowingly accepted the second charge then it becomes valid with no exception. I think what OP did by simply refusing to pay the unnecessary upsell and finding another hotel to stay at is the correct course of action to take in this type of situation
As you state, if the facts really are as OP describes then he really should not have any problem with a credit card dispute