LorshkaKatorshka

I booked a 6 night stay in a hotel near Disney Tokyo last month through Booking,com. The hotel didn't really misrepresent itself in the listing, but for an American, it was not really a three star property. The beds were absolutely horrific, and no, they were not traditional mats. We made it four nights, and then decided that since the hotel also had no dining options other than a convenience store next door, we would go to Shinjuku. I felt like I was on an entirely different trip once I checked in to the Keio Plaza Tokyo. So, after my return home I contacted Booking.com to see about getting a refund for my two unused nights at La'Gent Hotel Tokyo Bay. The staff there did not speak fluent English, so I had decided to deal with the refund issue via Booking.com. We paid approx $160/night, and the hotel is very busy and sold out our room immediately. Unfortunately, Booking.com was NO help. They told me the hotel refused to refund my rate, even though nowhere on my documents stated it was a non-refundable rate, and I did not pre-pay for the hotel online. As a "goodwill" gesture, Booking.com offered me a whopping $19 refund. I went back and forth with the customer service person, but they simply stopped responding, I'm a little surprised that as an OTA they did nothing to try to help their customers. Have others had issues with Booking.com? I won't use them again.

889

The problem is, most booking.com reservations become non-cancellable at a certain point. To guard against precisely what happened to you in Tokyo, I usually break a long booking into two or more shorter bookings. Then if I'm unhappy with the place, I can cancel the subsequent bookings before the deadline. But when you make a single booking for a long stay, you're stuck with a single deadline that'll have passed by the time you check-in.

Here, booking.com presumably refunded a part of their commission to you. But the bulk of the room rate belongs to the hotel, and the way booking.com works, it's up to the hotel to decide whether to refund in a case like this.