https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/t...-booking-risks

Nerd Wallet did a great article on my experience

wow!

I am glad this was published, so that many others can see what happened when you dealt with this business.

Booking dot com is not entirely innocent here.

"This drawn-out booking flow is prone to accidents and is a tactic used by some online travel agencies, airlines and hotels to get customers to spend more money. It’s called “drip pricing,” a practice where they do not show all mandatory fees until the very end of the booking process. As recently as August, the attorney general of Texas filed a lawsuit against Booking Holdings, the parent company of Booking.com, for omitting mandatory fees from initial room rates."

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/t...-booking-risks
read this article, Booking.com behaves unethically

I once had to make a lasst minute cancellation of a hotel I booked through booking.com. They told me they cannot cancel but I should contact the hotel. I did and they verified the cancellation. I got my money back.

Most hotels will honor a cancellation, especially in cases like this. Unethical ones won't. Sorry to hear about the dilemma and good for you for finding energy to find compensation and warn others.

First, well done on having a consumer advocate site look into this. As someone said, it can't hurt.

I have found some information, however, that indicates you should prepare to bite the loss. Before I go further, I hope you will remind yourself that you were actually doing many things right, such as trying to plan ahead for a stay of significant length for your daughter, doing research about prices and so forth. It is hard enough to have to fork over money you didn't intend to fork over without sticking the fork in yourself, so to speak. Don't in other words be down on yourself.

Because it is easy to make assumptions and forget to verify them. Everyone, I promise you, does this at some point. You are not alone in assuming that because governments have legislated that airlines must allow a 24 hour cancellation window, that this is true for hotel rooms. It isn’t, and the consumer advocate Christopher Elliott himself has verified this. His article on the subject of nonrefundable hotel rooms dates to 2014 but so far as I can tell, his information is still valid.

Note: If you turn off your ad blocker for the USA Today site, you should be able to get at least this article free: “Nonrefundable hotel rules leave some hot about hotels”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/trave...-room/7127665/

Salient point from above article. Unlike airline tickets there's no chance for a refund [with a prepaid/nonrefundable hotel room], even if you change your mind within 24 hours of making the reservation.

A second, later article was also published in USA Today indicating that the hotel still owes holders of nonrefundable contracts value for the money paid, but only for the exact conditions you booked – the date range in question, and the standard of room in question.

You booked a year out so it is not like the date of performance of the contract has passed. If you didn’t print out your booking that you inadvertently made on Booking dot com, ask for their help, for this is your proof your daughter is entitled to service from the hotel. I would also save any emails made to your credit card company, and possibly ask for advice from them since the date of performance of the contract exceeds 90 days of the time you paid for the booking.

>> I did and they verified the cancellation. I got my money back.

I think you mean that you contacted the hotel before cancelling. That they agreed to do the cancellation and refund. The sequence being: book & pay, contact, cancel, refund. Being last minute, they may have known that they could sell out or may have been overbooked.

I winced when I read that the OP booked & paid and then cancelled immediately. That completed the transaction and was unilateral. Giving up the reservation takes away the obligation they had to provide lodging. That reservation was leverage. If you pay the advance purchase rate and hold them to it then you are preventing them from selling the room at a higher rate (hopefully to people who will show up and spend more money there).

But can one be deemed to have surrendered all rights so long as consideration was paid (it was) and the date of the start of the original contract performance hasn't passed?. In the case of nonrefundable airline tickets, and the 24 hour window has passed, you usually still have a credit IF you cancel and avoid being a no show, not if you don't cancel.

This is Christopher Elliott's other article on the subject. It is a later article dated 2020.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/trave...nd/4971341002/

Regarding the 'flow' of Booking dot com. One does not need to sign in to Booking to stipulate the currency one wishes to see prices displayed in, nor even pull up any hotel particulars at all. The blue bar at the top of the page contains a three letter currency code that is set viz, USD, EUR, GBP, CAD or whatever. If you hover your cursor on it , it prompts 'select currency' and if you then click, you have an array of currencies to choose from. So I am not entirely sure why nerd wallet feels the flow of Booking was a factor.

It also for better or worse is quite legal to allow hotels to display their offers beginning with the cheapest offer first (it is a way of competing with other hotels on price) and that offer nearly always comes with the most severe cancellation policies. Again, booking has the defence that they display the word 'nonrefundable' in bold font to highlight to the consumer that that is a condition on the offer associated with a given price.

I'd feel a lot better about the OP's chances if this were a recognizable hotel chain.

Here is what Booking's TAC [Terms and Conditions] says. Part A7.

Note, under Part A7 Section 5. If the currency selected on the Platform [this is the three letter code in the blue section at the top of the page I spoke of] isn't the same as the Service Provider's [hotel's] currency, [which would of course be GBP] we may:

• show prices in your own currency
• offer you the Pay In Your Own Currency option.

So far as I can tell, you didn't see prices in USD but you wanted them to be so displayed. You say that they 'generally show the exchange rate' but that is true only if you select the 'pay in your own currency' option so far as I can tell. The problem is, that word 'pay'. IF the offer you selected was a nonrefundable rate, that meant you were going to pay, then and there, not just see a conversion rate estimated.

Now, under A7 section 6, Pay in Your Own Currency, they say

• If you choose to use Pay In Your Own Currency, all fees and charges from us for use of the Pay In Your Own Currency service either (a) are included in the exchange rate or (b) appear as a separate line item (included in the total price displayed where applicable) during the checkout process.

>> But can one be deemed to have ...
Can one? Yes. Should one? is a different question. If you pay for a reservation and cancel it then you are releasing the hotel from the obligation to deliver. I don't like it but that is the thinking.

You give Wimpy a hamburger today when he offers to gladly pay you for it on Tuesday. If you then tell Wimpy that he has no debt to you then don't be surprised if he doesn't pay you on Tuesday.

"Pay in Your Own Currency"
Don't do this.

hello mr wunrfl, i hope you are having a wunrfl day.

Wimpy did not prepay his hamburgerr. He was attemptng to reserve one for todays consumption, with payment on a later date. Knowing wimpy, likely a much later tuesday than the next tuesday. The joke so far as i know predates widespread credit cards. In any case the buyer is the one who in my opinion is lending money here, not the seller, with the debt to be settled in service not in cash. Op has prepaid, she has not pre- donated.

In this situation the cancellation triggered a release of rooms from inventory. That in my lay opinion does not release seller from performing on the contract. The contract it is true, does not require seller to refund any or all of her money. And, Seller need not provide exact hotel rooms originally booked, only equivalent value. People get 'walked' all the time on arriving at hotel despite not having released their room from inventory, because the hitel did this, ie overbooked.

This could easily be reversed by the hotel, as i doubt at 112 per night in london uk, this hotel is of the type that hosts conventions, which can book well in advance. but again any equivalent value presumably would meet condition of performance.

Re pay in own currency. I agree she should not do thiis. Allmost always a lousy conversion rate. I was attempting to figure out how she got a price in usd, for an overseas hotel, on previous overseas hotel bookings through booking dot com, without simply changing the currency preference field which it seems she did not know about.

as an aside, when i change that field on booking dot com to my home currency, i do so only for the purpose of window shopping. I note the price offers of interest in my home currency, then change the field back to hotel local currency before undertaking to actually reserve. In other words, I only actually agree, as in reserve, to a price denominated in local currency ptecisely because dynamic currency conversion is a bad deal.

Edit. When I mentioned a lousy conversion rate offered by merchants/hotels or brokers/booking dot com above, this rate is lousy irrespective of the date of settlement - whether it is immediate, as in prepaid contracts, or at some date in the future, as with contracts that require payment only at or near the date of the start of the hotel room occupancy. Since of course currency rates always 'float' depending on the date of settlement, no matter what party performs the conversion.

The point users of booking dot com and for that matter nerdwallet should appreciate, is that there is MORE THAN ONE 'flow' on Booking dot com. Two 'flows' are completely independent of purchase, as in, they don't automatically start a chain of steps that if followed, sooner or later take one through to payment. Because one of these flows 'stops' as soon as you input a given currency to reset the currency preference field, and the other one of those flows 'stops' as soon as you input a given language of preference. To repeat, one can set either of those fields independent of window shopping OR of actual reservation or of payment. They are not part of that payment 'flow.'

The "Flow' on Booking dot com that the OP engaged in, that got her into this very stressful situation, is the one that is triggered when one pulls up a given hotel. That 'flow' is the one that if you just keep clicking through, is sooner or later going to have you agreeing to pay - either immediately or at some future date, if you don't cancel before that date. But of course, one isn't obliged to keep clicking through, one can stop of one's own accord before one reaches the reservation point, as several other posters have pointed out.

The entire point of my posts is to point out to people that there are far less risky ways of experimenting with hotel prices in this currency or that one, without golng all the way through to reserving a room.

By way of example. When i change that three letter currency code field at the top of the page on booking dot com to my home currency, i do so only for the purpose of window shopping. After I set the code, I then pull up hotel records for a given location and date range. For each hotel, I write down the price offers of interest in my home currency, bearing in mind that these offers will be estimates only since of course currency exchange rates float, and of course my credit card will still embed in the final price debited on my card, a given conversion rate. Not to mention a price is not guaranteed until you actually click 'reserve.' Either way, before I actually reserve, I always change the three letter currency code field back to hotel local currency. This is part of ensuring I only actually agree, as in reserve, to a price denominated in local currency precisely because dynamic currency conversion is a bad deal. Note that resetting the field might not be enough, for depending on the latest way the Booking dot com programmers have set things up, I might still have to answer 'no' to 'Buy in home currency.'

>> i hope you are having a wunrfl day.
thanks, right back atcha

>> back to hotel local currency
Looks like booking does the same as other sites (agoda, japanican) that I use, showing my currency and the local currency and states that you will pay in local currency.

This is true at least for this reservation in Hakone, Japan, for Feb 3-4. The cleaning fee is vey unusual for Jqpan but I thinkm it is because this is a "villa" that can accommodate up to 5 people and is called a "vacation home".

See the price of $244 with these details:

• Flexible to reschedule if plans change ?
• Non-refundable
• Pay in advance

Click on the circled-? and see this popup:
-------------------popup--------------------------------
Meals
No meal is included in this room rate.

Cancellation
• Non-refundable
If you cancel, modify the booking, or don't show up, the fee will be the total price of the reservation.However, you can reschedule your stay one time until January 31, 2024 for the same or a higher price. You’ll only be charged if there’s a price difference between your new and old dates.

Prepayment
• Pay in advance
The total price of the reservation is charged at the time of booking.
------------------- end popup--------------------------------

If you select 1 unit and click on "I'll reserve" then the following info is on the next page:

Total
$304.77
Includes taxes and fees
In property currency: ¥43,258

Price information

Includes $82.79 in taxes and fees
10 % VAT $22.20
Cleaning fee $60.59
This price is converted to show you the approximate cost in $. You'll pay in ¥. The exchange rate might change before you pay.
Keep in mind that your card issuer may charge you a foreign transaction fee.

How much will it cost to cancel?

• If you cancel, you'll pay
  $244 *

>> my lay opinion does not ...
really matter. You are making a case, a good argument, but the other side wins every time with "a deal is a deal". That is the reality. I don't like it.

The price quote at booking com of $304.77 is fair, given that currentlty
43,258 Japanese Yen equals 301.21 United States Dollar
(it is about one percent higher, $3 and change, than IBR and maybe that is a Visa/cc fee)

Mr wunrfll

. Once again, I hope you are having a wunrfl day. Thanks for showing the Japanese reservations

You mention that a deal is a deal. This is true, but first the deal has to be a bona fide deal. With respect, you used Wimpy as an example, but Wimpy did not make a deal, as in, a legal contract which involved his having a debt to settle at some future date, that was forgiven. In respect of his getting something IN EXCHANGE from Hamburger Seller (HS), today, he had to have offered something of value to give in return - his wristwatch, maybe, or his services in cleaning the establishment, or the right to use his bicycle for a day, whatever.

But Wimpy didn't exchange anything with HS. A promise, as millions of voters ought to know but seem to forget every election, has no intrinsic value. Contracts often involve promises, but promises cannot serve as consideration. And both parties to a contract have to exchange consideration.

I think what you might be trying to emphasize is that a contract or deal can still be legally binding, even if the consideration exchanged is very modest relative to the value of the counterparty's offer. I do see your point, since as most people who read this probably know, people have legally sold properties worth way more than $1, in exchange for consideration of $1.

And what you seem to be saying is, by cancelling, trvaelinmom downgraded her counterparty's required consideration from granting her or her daughter the right to occupy a hotel room for 73 nights in a year's time, to consideration consisting of her holding that right for all of a few minutes, a year in advance.

My difficulty is that you also posted, as part of the conditions of the nonrefundable reservation for at least the Japanese hotel:
"if you cancel, modify the booking, or don't show up, the fee will be the total price of the reservation."
I see that in the instance of at least the japanese hotel, they do not indicate that a modification is never to be permitted, only that in such instance the fee for the modified booking will be the total price of the [sic] reservation. It's even more confusing given that the same hotel also says that a rescheduling of dates (which would be a modification) is permitted until X date for the same or a higher price. (Higher than what? The prevailing rate at the time of rescheduling, or the rate of the original reservation? It's ambiguous...)

It gets even crazier since in the FAQ of Booking, they answer, in reply to: "Can I cancel my booking?" the published answer is:

If your booking is non-refundable you cannot cancel. If your booking is free cancellation or partially refundable, check your confirmation email or confirmation page in the Bookings section of your account for the cancellation costs.

So how is it that she is deemed to have cancelled a non-refundable booking, if the contractual condition apparently is that this is impossible? It is presumably that the buyer's commitment of funds can't be cancelled, but not necessarily the right to reschedule a room in respect of those funds, if one accidentally (if only because the system permitted her to do so) released the rooms back into inventory.

https://www.booking.com/tpi_faq.html

I read that as shorthand for "you cannot cancel and get a refund", which is the plain meaning of "non-refundable". Clearly you can cancel, as the OP did, or as one could by not showing up, but you can't expect a refund it you do so.

Also, surely a contract, signed by two parties, is legally binding even if nothing of value is exchanged at the time of signing. Isn't that what "pay on arrival (or departure)" is? Isn't that what a marriage is, in the absence of a pre-nup?

A lot of the arguments pro and con re the OP are from a US perspective. The OP is in the States but that hotel is in the UK so different rules. (I honestly don't think Booking has a horse in this race other than perhaps advocating for the OP).

Some UK regulations are more pro consumer and some are less so. The OP made enough (perhaps innocent) mistakes here that her credit card issuer in unlikely to help. As I suggested waaaaaay up thread but the OP seems to have dismissed -- I strongly urge the OP to contact one of the travel trouble shooters at the Times, Telegraph or one of the other national newspapers. They each write clumns 2-3 times a week and are usually VERY successful getting some satisfaction for the complainant. They name, shame and sometimes get the authorities involved. (sort of like what Christopher Elliott does but specifically for the UK)

Now, no guarantees because this hotel seems to be a low class/very basic place that probably has never seen a booking for more that £500 or £600 and very much wants to keep that windfall.

>> Contracts often involve promises, but promises cannot serve as consideration.
Consideration is a promise, performance, or forbearance bargained by a promisor in exchange for their promise. Consideration is the main element of a contract. Without consideration by both parties, a contract cannot be enforceable.

Wimpy offered a contract to HS.

>> (Higher than what? The prevailing rate at the time of rescheduling, or the rate of the original reservation? It's ambiguous...)
You are over-thinking this or maybe just over-reaching in criticism. The "same or higher price" would be the price quoted for the original reservation which was given elsewhere.It is pretty clear, but what you doing - questioning the wording of a contract - is worthwhile in general

I did notice this wording: "the fee will be the total price of the reservation". Seems to be saying that all I would be paying for is a reservation.