HotwireReviews 770

Changed my flight for 2 hours later, same day, same origination city, same destination city.
Hotwire charged me full price for the new flight but never refunded me the original ticket.
Called Customer Service (that's a joke) 15 times, usually put me on hold for ever, if I didn't hang up then they dropped the call.
I wrote 3 times to their Corporate Tier 3 office and NEVER got a reply.

THIS IS THE WORST COMPANY I HAVE EVER USED (I AM 65).
NEVER EVER USE HOTWIRE.

I booked a hotel with Hotwire for this past NewYears. Showed up early to get booked into our room to find out Hotwire did not book is a room and the hotel was not affiliated with Hotwire anymore. We were left in Toronto on NewYears to find our own hotel. We were on the phone with Hotwire for a total of 5 hours seeking assistance on a new room and was never assisted as we were transferred a total of 6 times. We were lucky to find a hotel on our own or we would have had to sleep in the car and we were forced to pay double the price for a room which wasn't too pleasant. Hotwire took forever to refund my funny as they fraudulently charged my credit card to a hotel they did not book me a room. Finally received my money back and they assured me I would be receiving a refund on the extra money I had to pay for a hotel due to their mistake and it was been over a month and a half not and have not seen the money. I email them and every time they tell me an extra 10 business to tack on as they are slowing the process. They have awful customer service and would never boon with them ever again.

No flight confirmation email was sent... No refund was given... No help was provided. I settled with a credit; however, upon attempting to use the credit Hotwire customer service representatives kept me on hold waiting to speak to their supervisor with absolutely no communication for hours. They also stated that the cheaper flight prices presented online were not available to them over the phone and that i would have to purchase a flight TWO TIMES the price if i wanted to use my credit. LEAST HELPFUL, MONEY SCROUNGING, THIEVES! Looking at the incredible number of negative reviews makes me wonder if Hotwire bases their business on ripping people off and charging absurd prices. PLEASE DO NOT SPEND YOUR MONEY HERE! I would highly suggest using EXPEDIA or any other company. Hotwire will only bring you problems with receiving your booking confirmation, the total price that they confirm with you has been incorrect, if you need to change your flight and they provide you with a credit they will not allow you to use it unless they have taken almost 40% of the money you originally spent. TERRIBLE customer service, the supervisors are probably the worst people to speak to out of the customer service representatives.

Hotwire is unpredictable, unreliable and not customer friendly. The company has a tendency to overbook rooms and leave customers stranded with no solution. If you call customer service the agents are not trained to deal with issues instead they put you on hold for hours (I have spent hours trying to resolve this issue). Ultimately they overbooked the confirmed reservation I made in california and did not inform me or find another solution. I would highly recommend NOT to use hotwire for hotel bookings.

Long story short, I bought a Hotrate hotel night, which is supposed to be at least 30 percent off right. WRONG. When I found out what hotel it was, (out of curiosity) I went to book the same exact thing I did on Hotwire and it was a dollar less on the company website. That's bogusness because since I didn't know what hotel I was getting the discount should've been higher and NOT THE SAME PRICE AS THE ACTUAL HOTEL WEBSITE. Then I contacted customer service and their attitude was pretty much- well sucks to be you. Excuse you? How is it even possible that a secret hotel was more expensive on Hotwire than the real website?
Now, let's have a little follow up to my story. When I got to the hotel they told me that since I was under 21 (I'm 20), I couldn't get a room, that was already fully paid for. I called Hotwire and they got me another hotel room and a refund (I still had to pay for the new room). Since it was Hotwires mistake (It said 18 and up on the website) it should've been their common courtesy of getting me the other hotel complementary, seeing it was 11 pm and we were stuck trying to decipher our situation in the lobby for a good 45 minutes..

Hotwire is the worst place to book a flight if you think your reservation change due to some emergency cicumstances. It happened to me today. Because of some emergency thing, my flight got cancled and i contacted hotwire for the help. I talked with three different customer service representative all of them took more than 30 hours to answer my question. Two of them got nasty and terminated my call. They also asked my number to call back but never called back. All of the three put me in hold for about 2 hours and all of them said the same thing. They also dont say they can or can not help u. The thing is they dont wann help you and they make u wait in ph for longer period of time. I decided not to purchase any ticket from hotwire now onward. They are not serious company. I hate them more than anything else. Dont do business with hotwire.

Hotwire is an operating company of Expedia Inc. I was attempting to book a room in Palm Beach Gardens for 3 nights. When I received the email showing the address of the hotel it was in WEST PALM BEACH! I called hotwire back (in Bangalore, India!) only to be transferred to another rep. It turns out this one was an expedia rep given me by a hotwire rep, WHAT? Anyway he corrected the problem (I thought) booking us into a hotel in Palm Beach Gardens and ensuring us that the errant hotel in West Palm Beach had been removed. When our Master Card bill came, you guessed it, there were charges for both hotels. I called a Hotwire rep "Ranjit Singh" or something, in Bangalore for help. I might as well have talked to a cabbage. Absolutely no interest in helping me. I called M/C and contested the second hotel fee on my M/C bill. Now M/C is telling me I have to come up with all of the documentation from last year to prove that what I am saying is true. I guess birds of a (corporate) feather stick together! By the way, I HAVE all the documentation so I'll fight this till I die! The M/C rep also told me that I was Guilty until I proved my innocence!
M/C, I am positive knows full well the bad practices that Hotwire is meting out to their customers. The problem is, we the people can never get to the parties that are really responsible for the rip offs that we endure, of course I am talking about the greedy executives that will do just about anything to rip us off for another few hundred dollars as in my case here. Those CEO's should be totally ashamed of themselves. Is it that tough to run an upfront honest business? God please help protect us from these monsters that belong to that exclusive group "The Circle of Greed".
They just can Never have enough. How pitiful!

There no any other company which can compete with Hotwire. I have to admit that, they are best as i had an amazing experience with them

I have always used Priceline but I could not get the fight I wanted I needed to used two airplanes going out on Untied and return on Delta when check in Untied said how would you like a direct flight on Delta sure who want to send 4 hours in O'hare before I even got to Delta ticket counter hotwire email me about the change in plans and I like that they knew before Delta knew and Delta knew nothing about it Thank United for messing up and check me in on my return flight when I am not at that airport yet I will used Hotwire again but may stay away from United flights

Every time I contacted customer service after my nightmare of a stay, that cost me so much money after missing a crucial meeting, I was met with not only indifference but only what I can describe as mentally disabled customer service workers. I sent 9 e-mails and made 2 phone calls. At no point could anyone even understand what the problem was nor were they willing to do a thing about it. The hotel rooms were disgusting. I wanted 2.5 stars rooms and they were less than 1 star if that. I've stayed in shady prostitute ridden motels that were cleaner. I was looking for a place in Culver City and they put me in Burbank. It took me 3 hours to get to Culver City in LA traffic. I trusted Hotwire to put me at least within an hour of Culver City. They are the absolute worst travel company to deal with. Run. Run away as fast as you can. Get a lawyer, quickly, if you use them. They are slippery and full of themselves. They completely believe they are above the law and consumer affairs.