Booking.comReviews 4,273

We booked a hotel in Ocean City, Md. Had a serious problem with young college partiers all night. We contacted booking.com who was not very helpeful. We ended up threatening to contact American Express and reverse the charge. We finally got a refund. We left a professionally worded & honest review but booking.com scrubbed our review from the hotel website.
Then we looked at the actual motel website and found out that the motel was offering less expensive prices than booking.com. We sent booking.com an email and screenshot of the hotel's website pricing showing a lower price and asked please for the difference because booking.com has a "Best Price Guarantee" and we were given a run around. Finally contacting American Express got us the difference in a refund.

MY RECOMMENDATIONS:
1) Always use a credit card NOT a debit card to book your reservation. When you have a problem you can always file a dispute with your credit card company to get a refund if booking.com does not respond with a satisfactory reply to your complaint. Be sure to file your complaint within 30 days after you receive your bill. If you book your reservation using a debit card it is like using cash they have your money, and you have no recourse.

2) Do not believe the pictures that are posted. In our case, the pictures of the motel room look nothing like the actual room, ( or any other room in the hotel) there was NO ocean view as shown in the picture. I believe that the picture was from a different property because the hotel is not Oceanfront and the ocean could never be seen from any angle.

BOTTOM LINE:
In my experience, booking.com was a very poor reservation site, will not be using them again.

Please mark this review helpful to assist other readers. Thanks!

Attention Julio and Mr Terry.

From: Kristina Christie <*******@lawrencelawry.co.uk>
Subject: ******* Attention Tom
Date: 28 April 2015 15:16:38 BST
To: *******@homeaway.co.uk

Hello Tom,
Thanks for your time today.
Just to recap the following are the issues with the property *******.

The manager, owner was very slow in responding to any email or telephone queries.
The photographs that were sent me were a compilation of photos of a variety of apt and villas rented by this agent.
The apartment was not clean and light bulbs were out in the master shower room.
The door to the shower room was broken.
The stove/hob was broken.
The kitchen was not as advertised, fully equipped. It did not have a cooker or a kettle or a coffee maker. The BBQ was dangerous and broken.
There were no sea views as advertised and the private beach access did not exist.
Most importantly, the master bedroom external door was broken and would not lock.
The handy men who arrived to look at eh glass door did not have tools nor the parts required to make the door secure. Neither man was interested in looking at the hob as they were not electricians. Nothing further could be done until Monday. We arrived on a Friday and our flight home was on Weds.
I told Clara, one of Julios employees, that we would be leaving and moving into a hotel as we could not stay in a flat that was not secure. She indicated that she understood.

In terms of unauthorised payments on my card there were three. Two for 235 Euros and a further for 200 euros but I would like a full refund as the property was not as advertised at all.

I have forwarded you the emails where Mr Terry and Julio have agreed to transfer funds into my account, and request my details but as of today no monies have arrived.

Cheers,
Kristina Christie

Using Booking.com has made planning a holiday nice and smooth. Look forward to using it for our next holiday

The customer service was ridiculous. They were giving form answers that didn't even match what we were talking about, but they were happy to make me pay twice for sub par accommodations (turns out the only "Reviews" of the hotel on the site were fake). It's just been a terrible dragged out and expensive experience thanks to them.

Everybody know that booking got the opportunity to book with credit card and without... what happen when you book with CC? Do you know that booking.com send directly to the Hotel ALL you credit card details? Do you know that if you are an hotel owner and you don't have a POS station for insert the credit card data of the customer that booking provide you yo don't have any guarantee to get paid by the customer if they don't show up? Do you know that booking.com make you pay commission also on the non show booking if the person that placed the booking lie to them and say that he did checked in in the hotel? Do you know that booking.com is totally a $#*!? I used 3 year agoda.com (and still use it) and in 3 years I've got 3 non show, after one month in booking.com, 4 non show and a review written by one of this non show i say it again, booking.com is $#*!!

Booking.com really must look into what your customers review because some hotel in your list are really horrible with their customers service and how they treated their guess. I'm one of the victim too and the hotel push all responsible to booking.com. If you see my review and you are interested to know what's really happened to us, I will be looking forward of your email. If not I think there's no point for us to use your platform in future as we don't feel secure any more. I wrote to your customer service today but there's no reply too... very disappointed!

I had more than 50 booking made through booking.com. All were without any problem from booking.com side. But some were with a problem.

Once I arrived in hotel in Nuremberg (Germany) and they told me that I have to pay double price as indicated on the reservation - I refused, called booking.com and payed exactly the price for which I reserved the room (I have got many calls from booking.com asking how is the status and what did hotel told me).

I think its the most reliable reservation side for hotels.

Stanley Goose Cottage in Stanley, Victoria Australia.
Close to historic Beechworth this cottage has all the amenities and utensils to ensure a home away from home environment with additional benefits. A beautiful ten acres including many Chestnut trees and a domestic gaggle of geese. A Swedish dry sauna inside as well as a great wood fire heater. Quality furniture, fittings, linen, bedding and towels. A covered patio/veranda offering beautiful views and including a large BBQ with a Wok burner. The perfect quiet country retreat.

In a nutshell, i booked a hotel through booking.com in goa india, the full amount of the booking was taken, i queried this with booking.com but received no answer, when we arrived we found out that the hotel had been taken over and there was no record of our booking. Obviously we had to go elsewhere at more cost. On our return we requested a refund from booking.com due to the hotel changing hands and not having our accommodation, after months of emails from me to them but hardly nothing in return i decided to ring them to find out what was happening, the customer service (if you can call it that) lady who i spoke to hung up on me after i told her i could not produce a statement going back to april 2014, i suppose i could of requested one from the bank which would of charged me but booking.com would not guarantee they would refund the cost of that let alone the original cost.

Booking.com touts the "Best Price Guaranteed" for their hotel reservations. THIS IS NOT THE CASE. I booked an Ibis Hotel in Amsterdam for approx. $168 per night. I then found it on Accorhotels.com for $122. I called customer service pointed, out the difference in price and was advised by a nice gentleman that it would have to be reviewed by someone else but both he and his supervisor agreed that I would get a price adjustment. Guess what happened? I didn't qualify because it was a non refundable reservation and it is in the small print. After doing some research I believe that well over one third of on line reservations are non refundable therefore the lowest price claim is a blatant lie. This is a poor way of doing business and should be taken off of the web site. I will never do business with this company again even if they have the lowest price. I will also contact the Better Business Bureau that they prominently feature on their sites. Buyer Beware

If you want to experience same flavour of communism and to feel how stasi was operating years ago try to book your vacation by booking.com.
I have booked a room in Prague for Easter 2015. I have come to the hotel (Villa Revova) with my booking.com reservation and discover that hotel is booked and I had been told that can go away. Just like that without any explanations, they did not care. (it was a French company). Booking.com took about 3 hours to book a new hotel in totally different location for twice more money. That how companies were operating during communism. No people were important during this period.
I have finally managed to find same alternative in about 5 minutes without booking.com help.
I have lived for many years during communism in Poland just to discover that we are living in same corporate communism with is far more worse and danger.
Lets promote small honest business caring about people. Get rid of mafia style companies. Stop using them.

The is the worst Company you could ever but your trust into. You see a nice, Queen room with 2 queen beds and pay a hefty price for it... only to get to the hotel and find that all they have is a room with 1 full bed and a sofa with pull out bed (I use the words "sofa" and "bed" loosely here). The pull out "bed" was basically a set of bed springs with a thin piece of material wrapped around them. You could feel the springs piercing you in the side as you tried to lay on it. The hotel blamed booking.com and booking.com blamed the hotel. The hotel (Microtel by Wyndam@ Sea World San Antonio) refused to provide any compensation and booking.com "reluctantly" said they would give us a $50 refund. Well, that hasn't happened and from what other reviews I've read, we never will get our refund. I blame both the hotel and booking.com: one for selling us sonething we did not receive and the hotel for allowing booking.com to book their rooms. They both are at fault. Each booking.com representative I spoke to lied to me. Each one promised to send an e-mail to confirm our conversation and our forthcoming $50 refund. We never received one. We got one phone call from a guy saying "We sent you an e-mail. You have to fill it out to receive your refund." It was a survey to fill out about the hotel, not a survey for booking.com. We filled it out and we still have no refund. DO NOT USE THESE LYING $#*!S EVER!

I booked 5 star Sari Pacifica resort for eight days. It was a big disappointment when arriving.My villa was advertised as a lagoon villa.The lagon was old blue color plastic.The rooms are big, but need renovation. All resort area, rooms, pool, garden, breakfast room and breakfast are far away from 5 star resort and very overpriced.The breakfast was very poor for 5 stars.No fresh sea food on the island.At the dinner we had the last bottle of red wine, and then had to wait the next delivery.The only good, is a beautiful beach and amazing staff. Mr. Ryan, mr. Shan, mr. Osvaldo, served with great hospiality.