Hey all,

Just curious if anyone else has experienced something similar.

I have been sending e-mails back and forth with a particular hotel and they have always been quick to answer my questions (most times within 12 hours).

This past Wednesday, I placed a reservation request via their website (sent via e-mail). My request included a credit card number.

As of this afternoon, they have not provided any confirmation that they received this e-mail. I have sent 2 subsequent e-mails (just to try and confirm that they received my request), but they have not responded.

Do I just keep e-mailing them?...call them?...or just leave it alone thinking that they just do things differently there.

I call the hotel by phone during the time there is someone who knows what's going on (their business hours.) I used to worry about not having written confirmations, but so far all verbal confirmations have been solid.

My take on this is that there are things they consider so obvious (but not necessary to you) that they feel no need for further correspondences.

I use a MCI international card. It costs about 6cents/min from the US to do this, a cheap assurance.

I have much better luck making reservations by fax.

Call them. Ask them to fax you written confirmation. That way you can arrive with paper proof in hand in case there's a problem. Why waste time continuing to email when a call will take about 3 minutes?

Thanks

I try to keep emails to a minimum when doing hotel reservations, by asking all questions in the first one. I think too many back and forth can be a nuisance for a simple reservation.

However, you didn't reserve by email, but by their website and that's a different thing entirely. Many hotels in Paris use different software for their online reservations, it isn't direct with the hotel. It's hard to say what your situation is, as you don't mention the hotel, but it could well be that problem. You aren't reserving with the hotel, but an outside agency, and that can take longer to confirm or more problems. It's also possible it's just some email problem, like your ISP is putting that email in spam or something. I have had several reservations by those online systems that just disappear never to be confirmed or anything, so I don't usually do them unless it's the only choice.

The request was sent via e-mail. Their website provides 2 options:

1. Instant online reservation
2. Reservation by e-mail (through form on their web page)

The dates that I'm goging aren't loaded into the online reservation site as of yet, but they indicated that I could reserve via e-mail, which is what I did.

Thanks for your input.

Hi clem,

If you dial 1016868, your call to Paris will be only 10cts/min.

My preferred way is to call, then fax them my information, then they fax back the confirmation, answering any questions I might have asked them as to cancellation policy, etc. I definitely like to call to see if they have availability rather than wait around not knowing. It's called "instant gratification"!

Also, I (like Ira) learned to use the discount long distance # (1010987, from So. Fla.)and it's only 3 cents a minute plus a 38 cents connecting fee. A HUGE difference from regular L/D carriers like AT&T. Granted, there are more #'s to punch in, but the savings are significant (I use it in the US as well as Europe - the same charges).

We had the same experience two years ago with a Paris hotel. Once I sent the reservation in, I heard nothing back despite asking for verification. After several more requests for a response, we FINALLY got a reply, and it was something like, "Well, of course, you have a reservation. You sent it in, didn't you?" Not quite that direct, but you get the picture. Also, once we arrived, the desk person made a comment about how much paper had been used up (by us) with all of our emailing! He even waved the document around a bit. We just figured we didn't know the drill and let it go at that.

French hotels respond much beter to faxes and telephone calls than to e-mails--for some reason those seem to get lowest priority.

Probably not the case here, since you've had previous e-mail correspondence, but I've found that my ISP's spam filter has arbitrarily decided that many e-mails from French servers are spam.

I can no longer receive e-mails from people or hotels that I used to get regularly, even though they are listed in my address book, and to make matters worse they don't go into the junk folder, they just get blocked entirely. I've had to give folks in France a secondary e-mail address with another provider. By the way, I found this out when I phoned a hotel to determine why I hadn't heard from them and when a friend called to say his e-mails were coming back as undeliverable.

A lot of major ISPs unconditionally block e-mail from overseas correspondents: AOL, Hotmail, MSN, Comcast, Cox, Roadrunner, Mindspring, Earthlink, and many, many others. If you are with one of these ISPs, replies from overseas to your e-mails may simply be thrown away, without any notice to you. The only way to get around this is to change to an ISP that doesn't block e-mail based on origin alone.

A second problem is that French people are about twenty-five years behind when it comes to cyberspace. One very possible explanation for your experience is that the one person at the hotel who knows how to check the hotel's one and only e-mail account may have simply gone on vacation; if nobody else in the hotel has a clue about how to use that new-fangled 386 with the 300-bps dial-up, you won't get any answers.

Don't assume that French companies are good at e-mail; they barely understand what it is, and they don't know how to use it. And don't assume that e-mail sent to you by anyone other than another large ISP is getting through; many major ISPs are routinely and silently discarding <i>everything</i> that doesn't come from one of the other &quot;big boys.&quot;

I have one of the ISP's that was listed here today and I receive emails from Italy all the time.

I am not a computer expert (the understatement of the year, lol) but I think the comments from Anthony and others regarding hotels being lack regarding replying to email for the reasons listed is no doubt a good part of the problem. At least that is true with hotels in Italy.

I hope you get this worked out clemson. I too would call them if I were in your situation. Best wishes.

Surely emails are just as acceptable ways to book your rooms and faxes are not more reliable. It all depends on that particular hotel. I agree with what toulouse described as it's happened with me as well.

What you said about the many back and forth emails asking and receiving information is what I've experienced too. But once you confirm by emailing them your c/c information no word again. Sometimes it could be they're busy and can't reply or they figure you confirmed so that's that.

However, you can't assume you have a reservation so you should either fax or call them.

This is different but a couple of times I needed to cancel my reservations and the hotel never responded. I had to end up faxing them before they acted.

Just a follow-up.

Called the hotel this morning. The person I spoke with spoke very good english.

I explained my situation and he searched around for a minure before telling me that they had received my e-mail(s), but they were busy. He went on to say that I should be getting a confirmation via e-mail in the near future.

Guess I'll wait a little bit to see if they gat back to me.

Glad to know that your reservation is fine. I had a feeling the hotel was just busy and since you have confirmed your reservation they didn't put priority on sending a confirmation email to you. As I said this has happened to me before and that was the same explanation I got from the hotel I booked with.

Odd that they'd be too busy to answer e-mails, but they still manage to answer the telephone and fax.

More of a follow-up. Let me preface this by saying that I'm a little paranoid when it comes to making reservations and not having written confirmation.

I still have not received written confirmation of my reservation. The hotel indicates that they have received my request and have my reservation, but are too busy to confirm via e-mail (I don't necessarily understand this...how busy can you be that you can't send a quick e-mail confirming a reservation). The young lady I spoke with today indicated that she should be able to get to it tommorrow (which is what they said when I called on Sunday).

My initial request was sent last Thurday and since then I have contacted the hotel twice via phone.

Should I just give up on receiving written confirmation and go by their verbal response or do I need this written confirmation (part of me wants the confirmation in writing). I've very rarely dealt with foreign hotels, but when I did this past year with Costa Rican hotels they were very quick to respond in writing.

My trip is early next year, but I don't want to show up and find out that I don't have a reservation. Can ayone think of anything else I should do.

I'm an Earthlink customer, have been for years, and the claim above that they block overseas emails is just wrong.

Just thought I'd throw that in.