Travelnow.com & Hotels.com Cancellations?
 

Has anyone ever tried to cancel a hotel reservation that has been made using travelnow.com or hotels.com? I am looking to book a hotel in Spain which says that I must cancel before 6 pm day of arrival in order to avoid a penalty. No problems there.

However, Consumer Reports says that Hotels.com will charge you their own $20 cancellation fee. Travelnow.com is operated by Hotels.com - I can find no mention of a mandatory $20 cancellation fee above and beyond the hotel's policy anywhere on their sites. Does anyone know if this is true, or is Consumer Reports wrong? Thanks for your assistance.

Hi S,

Do they have a contact eml address or phone number?

((I))

I haven't but you have to read the cancellation policies carefully and if still unsure, call them and ask.

Sometimes I notice, these sites offer special rates, which often carry different cancellation policies than regular rates. I know expedia has the special deals, many of which you have to pay up front, and the cancellation policy very from a regular expedia booking.

Have you tried booking what ever hotels you are interested in directly. That's what I do most of the time, and in many cases the rates are the same or even better.

The info is contradicts itself on the sites..."we will charge your card now" versus "the hotel will charge your credit card." I will try emailing them - I frankly don't trust one sale's agents guarantee over the phone if I don't have something in writing!

The rate is 141 euros on the hotel's website. Two travel agents in Spain quoted me 180! The rate with travelnow.com and hotels.com is 99 euros! Quite a bit of a difference!

I'm not clear on where you are reading these various things -- like who said you must cancel before 6 pm to avoid penalty, the hotel itself that you've contacted, or hotels.com in the section where they describe the cancellation policy for that particular hotel and reservation?

Because I think they always charge some kind of service fee (hotels.com) when you make a booking through them (around US$20-25), so consumer reports may be calling that service fee a cancellation fee. If you cancel your reservation, you probably still will be charged that fee as a minimum, regardless of when you cancel.

At least that's what has been stated on any info I found on hotels.com for some hotels I was searching. they don't particularly call it a service fee in the "cancellation policy" section, but just a min. fee of $25 regardless of when you cancel. If you read the fine print in all the disclosure, they mention they have service charges.

Did you cehck the price on venere.com. They are supposedly very reliable. Lots of people here have booked through their site.

We used hotels.com for a reservation at a London hotel in November. They offered the best rates we could find for the specific hotel.

The credit cards were charged immediately--which, at least for our reservation, was clearly stated.

I did have to change the reservation after it was paid for. It was not a full cancellation, but rather a reduced number of nights. That was subject to a $25 fee--also clearly stated. However, hotels.com waived that fee without my even asking. I'm not sure why, but was pleasantly surprised.

The Hotels.com site states very clearly the cancellation policy and that a service charge will be applied to ANY cancelled reservation. In addition, if the reservation is not cancelled within the "cancellation period" a one-night charge will apply.

http://www.hotels.com/content_agreement.jsp

That link doesn't load for me. I live in Spain and I get an international version no matter what I do...even if I pick to be redirected to the US, when I click on links it switches back to the international version. Could you please copy the relevant clause and post it here? This is a frequent problem for me with travel websites. If you think I'm crazy, try booking a flight with Delta or any other US-based airline the next time you are connected to the internet overseas...it always redirects you no matter what site you say you want to see. Delta customer service told me that it was unavoidable as their servers read the IP address I am connecting from...I'm assuming this is what is happening with hotels.com.

Soleil, I have a similar problem with hotels.com, but can get around it in two ways. Use Google's cache, or use a program like Travelaxe that will bring up hotels.com no matter what.

But here is a shortened URL for that agreement (the US one) that should work for you also:
http://tinyurl.com/7wqa8