Booking.comReviews 4,273

Last week my wife and I spent a week in London near Paddington Station.
The area there is filled with Hotels, in every price category.
We saw accommodatins from as low as 19 Pound per night including a full English Breakfast, to 550 Pound per night at first class Hotels. But, our hotel was nearly fully booked (through Booking.com) and the accommodations were horrendous. We saw nearly identical accommodations around the corner for less than half of what we paid, and we saw very nice accommocations literally accross the street from our hotel for exactly what we paid. Yet at the time, we were booking (October) the rooms, Booking.com was telling us we were getting the best possible prices in the best locations. While perusing the London Newspapers, we spotted an article on the Front Page of The Times (Dec. 30) with the headline: "Travel firms dupe buyers with bogus cheap deals". We read the article and although it did not mention Booking. Com directly, it described their tactics to the T
I will never use Booking. Com again, but will find some other method for booking hotels even if it takes using Google Street View to find Hotels in the areas I want to go.

Lying cheating scumbags who I will never use again. Avoid using this company unless you want to get charged for rooms you thought you had legitimately cancelled.
After I had cancelled my booking a second booking mysteriously appeared on their site as if I had accidentally duplicated my booking.
This happened to me on 2 occasions.
The first occasions I did doubt maybe I had double booked.
The second occasions it happened I was 100% sure I hadn't duplicated my booking.
They even said I had made the duplicate booking on a different day to the original(Christmas day) I only book using my home computer and I was away until boxing day.
When I confronted them with the facts they said somebody must be hacking my computer and making the double booking on my behalf?
I am now out of pocket for 2 bookings which I never made.
The first time I gave them the benefit of doubt.
There is something seriously dodgy about this company that will come out in the wash. They are playing the system to trick unsuspecting honest customers.

THE KEY ISSUES ARE: INFORMATION PROVIDED ON BOOKING.COM's SITE IS DECEIVING AND THE BOOKING PROCESS IS VERY TRICKY.

The first step I took was to book the hotel for one night and great that it offers free cancellation so that I have time to plan my trip. Then, I thought to myself that it is better to book one more night on the safe side so I changed the date to the 20th instead of 19th. After I received the confirmation email from Booking.com to my email, then I saw texts which clearly state that there is a cost to cancel the booking and "Changing the dates of your stay is not possible." I also read that the hotel is undergoing constructions works! Furthermore, under the Call-to-Action button "I'll reserve", the texts actually blink and I didn't see the words "confirmation is immediate".

I just went online to check my credit card account and what do I find, a charge from Poulsbo Inn & Suites for $103.23. I called this property to let them know I would not be able to use my reservations for one night, because of the snow storm we had in our area. They told me that I had to cancel this reservation with booking.com, so I tried to accomplish this on their web site, but I was unable to access this feature. If it truly is accessible. Shame on both of these businesses.

I have never used the words "please share" on social media so you can assume that, if I do, I mean it. DO NOT BOOK A HOTEL WITH BOOKING.COM. There, I have said it. This is a scam - I know because I have fallen for it, twice in the past two months (well once me and once my partner). This is what happens. You book a room with breakfast, which is (at their cheapest rates) non-cancellable. You get the notification through from the hotel which (assuming you read it) excludes breakfast. You contact booking.com to correct this. They claim the rate never included breakfast. Of course you have no proof that it did. You try to cancel but they point out you have a non-cancellable room so you can't. In that way you end up paying a much higher rate than the room (without breakfast) is worth.

(To add insult to injury tonight's conversation included the line "you should have contacted us earlier we could have dealt with it - ironic given that's exactly what my partner did last time - she contacted them the second she received the notification - and got nowhere).

There are plenty of alternatives out there to booking.com. I have never had a bad experience with the others. I have had two identical ones in two months with booking, com. Once might be an error and is forgiveable. Twice is scam territory (and more fool me too frankly). So choose someone else if you don't want to get ripped off.

I have booked my apartment over booking.com in Belgrade, Serbia. After showing up at the apartment at the arranged time, the renter cancelled the apartment last minute, while I was in front of the building! I was forced to look for a new apartment in the foreign city that I don't really know at the last minute and I was late for my business appointment due to that. After contacting booking. Com, all they offered is an apology and a ridiculous compensation of 40 $. By advertising non-credible and non-professional renters, booking. Com is supporting their behavior and while collecting their fee from the renter and the traveller, they offer no guarantee to the travelers that their service is trustworthy and professional. I will not be using booking. Com again. I will switch to other accommodation sites that are more reliable.

I "reserved" a room 8 months in advance. They advertised as "book now, pay later". They immediately withdrew over $400 from account. I cancelled the room and they would not refund me. They kept putting the blame on the hotel. After many many phone calls and talking to about 5 different people, I knew that they were going to keep my money. I called the Hotel and begged and pleaded with them, telling them what happened. They agreed to refund my money and stated that they are looking into never using Booking.com ever again. (And this is coming from a 4 star hotel)

I booked with bookings.com for ten days in spain. Advertised as free cancellation up to 24 hours before departure. I had to cancel 5 days before departure due to ill health and doctors advice. Bookings.com did not inform the hotel of our cancellation so we were treated as a "NO SHOW" the full amount for the ten days stay was taken from our bank account. After must protesting and arguing we got 50% of our money back. "Book with bookings.com at your peril"

I was charged the full amount of a 3-night stay despite having cancelled my "free cancellation" reservation well before the deadline.

There seem to be serious issues with the Booking.com web site. In my case this resulted in generating two mutually exclusive emails:
A. Your booking is confirmed,
B. We noticed that you didnt finish your booking.
This resulted in creating the second "invisible" reservation.

There are also issues with their Customer Service. In response to my direct request to cancel the invisible reservation, the response was very positive: As you requested, weve cancelled your reservation. However, they didn't.

I have used booking. Com a few times with no problems and found some great value rooms too.

However, it only takes one bad experience to change my opinion permanently. I hate being ripped off, as I'm guessing most people do.

Recently I used booking.com to book the Best Western Skylane Hotel near Gatwick Airport in the UK.

I booked a triple room with 8 days free parking, for an incredible price of £91. So good I told all my friends.

BUT! On arrival at the hotel, we were met by a foreign guy manning the night desk, who could hardly speak a word of English. He was extremely difficult to understand and he found it difficult to understand me. I got the impression he was trying to charge me extra for the parking, but no amount of trying to explain to him worked. I left it until the following day, when I spoke to a young woman, who also told me that I needed to pay extra for the parking. I was furious and so in the end logged into booking.com and showed her the exact same deal for the following night. She refused to back down and said that booking.com had made a mistake.

My attempts to contact booking.com have met with absolutely zero response over the last month, so to prevent others from making the same mistake, I am now writing a review of my experiences at this dreadful hotel in as many places as possible.

No one rips me off and gets away with it. You've been warned. Be very careful when using booking.com. If it looks like a good deal, you may get your fingers burned later.

Long story short: I made a booking for a group (6 rooms, 3 nights) about 2 months in advance for Mexico City (Hotel Diligencias). 2 days before the check in date I received a message that my booking was canceled. I did not cancel it. When I called booking.com they did not take responsibility claiming they did not cancel it either - but they agreed it was canceled. And the hotel was already sold out (very fishy business). Extremely unreliable booking agency that does not work well with the hotels and does not hold them responsible for bookings!