I recently went through a dispute process regarding a lodging I reserved through Booking.com. I wanted to share some lessons I learned as a result of that process.
Background: I had a fairly last-minute opportunity to take my 3 kids to see Taylor Swift in Toronto last November. With about 2 weeks’ notice, I needed to secure lodgings for the 4 of us in a very sold-out town. Because of the parking/traffic situation and because one of my kids is mobility-challenged, I wanted to be able to park the car at our lodgings and walk no more than a block or two to the concert venue. So my choices were very, very limited.
I wound up reserving a 2-BR apartment for the one night in a great location for a reasonable price. Downside was that the listing was new to Booking.com with no review history and nonrefundable. Normally I wouldn’t touch this with a 10 foot pole, but I figured we could deal with any issues that might crop up in the very few hours we were actually going to be there. Note that I am a very seasoned Booking.com user, with tons of previous reservations. I’m pretty savvy about what to look for, and I knew this one might be risky.
Over the next few days, my communications with the host made me say “uh oh” to myself; there were difficulties with response time, payment (via PayPal), getting check-in/parking information. I went ahead at this point and made a backup reservation, fully refundable, at a nearby hotel (at more than 4x the price of the apartment).
End of story: We arrived in Toronto at 3:30 p.m. the day of the concert, which was the agreed-upon time for checking in to the apartment. I had no check-in instructions, no parking instructions, nothing but the street address of the high-rise apartment building. Given the difficulties with communicating with the host over the previous two weeks and the lack of check-in information, I drove to my back-up hotel, checked in there, and we had a lovely (though expensive!) stay. The check-in instructions for the apartment arrived via Booking.com messaging at 4:15, at which point I told the host that it was past our agreed-on check-in time and that he had not satisfied the terms of our reservation agreement.
I also contacted Booking.com as soon as I checked in to the hotel to inform them of the circumstances with the apartment, and they agreed that the reservation should be canceled and my payment refunded. However… I would need to seek the refund myself from the apartment host because I had paid him directly via PayPal.
Ultimately, I was unsuccessful having the host refund my payment directly. After a week of trying, I lodged a dispute with Booking.com and also with my credit card company (Costco CitiBank Visa). In the end, CitiBank won the race and settled the dispute in my favor. Booking.com agreed that I was owed a refund, but it was a time-consuming, tedious process to continually follow up with them.