redtigeriii

I’ll try to condense this as much as possible as my actual email to Hotwire was quite long. But what happened was, I had a prepaid & non-refundable (hot rate) hotel reservation for two nights recently. I made that reservation several months ago. Upon arriving to the hotel, they told me I did not have a reservation with them and that I needed to contact hotwire to help resolve it.

What ensued was three phone calls to Hotwire customer support, talking to four different representatives including a person who identified themselves as a supervisor. I had pushed for escalation after one rep said they had resolved the problem (but didn’t), another where I’d spent an hour on hold and then was hung up on, and then a third who said there was no problem with the reservation. I spent over three hours on the phone in total and eventually Hotwire called the hotel and talked to them directly, and still they were unable to figure anything out in regards to the hotel not receiving my reservation. I continued to insist that I’d already paid for this booking in talking to Hotwire rep's and that I expected them to stand behind this reservation and hotel they promised me. Eventually a supervisor told me the only thing they could do was that if I still wanted to stay at this hotel, I could pay the hotel directly (walk up rate) and that Hotwire would reimburse me in full after I submitted the receipt via email. This individual assured me multiple times that I would be reimbursed fully. I was given a case id as reference to the conversation and also the name of the supervisor that I talked to.

Five days later after emailing support with my receipts, I have not received any sort of response, or even an acknowledgement that my message was received. Is this unusual for Hotwire? I plan on emailing support again within the next day or so. But if that doesn’t work, what should my next step be? I’ve never had this issue with Hotwire before and am finding out just how poor their customer service is. Ultimately I want them to stand behind what I was told over the phone and honor the reservation at the price I originally paid.

tatterdema

I would find the US based customer service number. I used to have it, but dont anymore, but they are much better then the regular customer service.

Other than that, my only advice is to ALWAYS call and confirm your hotel reservation before traveling, no matter who you made the reservation through.

Good luck, and let us know how it went.

Romelle

Also wishing you well.

But wanted to add that, in addition to checking via phone ahead of time, I like to carry a physical paper print-out of the reservation. One more precaution and bit of evidence.

You may already have these, but just in case:

U.S./Canada toll free
(855) 677-0745

Outside U.S./Canada
(417) 520-1680
(toll charges apply)

travelguyusa02

also try this contact:

http://elliott.org/company-contacts/hotwire/

redtigeriii

Thank you for the replies. I did not know there was a US based customer service number. The only one I knew of was the main 1-866-381-3981. It was certainly difficult to communicate with the reps that I encountered calling their main line.

I did have a complete physical print-out of the reservation that I presented to the hotel. It didn’t do a whole lot of good as they said they received no reservation from Hotwire. After hours and hours on the phone with Hotwire customer service, the hotwire rep finally called the hotel directly. Basically, they had the same conversation that I had with the hotel front desk initially about the reservation. Both the person on the phone and the front desk person had thick accents and that led to even more trouble communicating and trying to resolve anything.

But there is good news. As I was getting ready to send Hotwire another email this morning, I received a reply to my initial one saying that after much consideration, I would be refunded in full for the stay. The whole experience left me frustrated, and if I do ever use hotwire again, I certainly will call the hotel directly in advance to see if they have the reservation.

I’m also going to contact the management at the hotel. There were two other people (while I was on hold with hotwire) that tried to check-in to the hotel, and was told they did not have a reservation for them. These people had booked through other OTA’s that weren’t hotwire. I found that quite odd and wonder how many people are showing up to this hotel just to be told there is no reservation, and wonder if the fault in not receiving the reservation is on the hotel's end.

tatterdema

Not surprising that people using other OTA's were having issues also, as Hotwire is Expedia, which has dozens of OTA's that all come into the hotel the same way. There are many reasons that this can happen, hotel issues, OTA issues, enough so that I personally always check and double check my reservations.

Lol, I love that many times I get emails from the OTA saying "No need to confirm, your reservation is secured". Yeah, right. It is secured until it isnt.

Glad it worked out for you. Sucks traveling all day just to have a hassle like that when you get to your destination.

redtigeriii

One detail I didn’t include in the initial post was that one of the hotel employees thought my reservation got sent to a different hotel in their chain in Jackson, MS, rather than Jackson Hole, WY, where I had a reservation. They said this has happened before.…and they were right. That hotel in MS did have a reservation for me, even though my confirmation and printout from Hotwire clearly showed the hotel in Jackson Hole, WY. I tried to explain this to Hotwire CSR's and they didn't seem to understand, and kept repeating from the same script asking me if I gave the hotel the confirmation number. I'm going to try to bring this to the attention to management of both sides. If its a widespread problem then it could really screw people over who book third party for this hotel...and Jackson Hole, WY isn't a place where you want to be looking for a last minute summer hotel.