Have you used 1 800 HOTELS to book a room?
 

I am not familiar with this booking site, but it is showing up now on BookingBuddy, Smarter Travel, and several other travel websites. Some of their rates are so much lower than other sites that I wonder if this is a too good to be true situation. Has anyone booked through this site, and what was your experience - good or bad?

Thanks for your help.

Here are two interesting accounts found while googling:

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/travel/1800hotels.html

http://www.yelp.com/topic/los-angeles-1800-hotels-com

And another:

http://www.executivetravelmagazine.c...sing+to+Refund

NeoP, thanks for your help. I too had googled up those discussions. Two are problems that I feel the customers brought on themselves, and the third discussion has some positive experience postings. But, as I always say, I trust my Fodorite buddies and their experiences the most!

Anybody?

DO NOT use 1-800-hotels. They bill out of Dublin, Ireland and your credit card is charged a foreign transaction fee. I live in NY and booked hotel in San Diego. They do not disclose the fact of out of country billing anywhere in their agreement statement. Very sneaky. I was charged an extra $21 for this fee. No satisfaction from their customer service.

I recently discovered 1-800-Hotels - I think they only recently started to do business within the US. I have used them twice so far. Just a few weeks ago for a hotel in Toronto for one night. I had no problems with it. I didn't notice any extra charge but maybe I missed it on my credit card. I will go back and look at it again. The rate I found on 1-800-Hotels was significantly less expensive than rates on other websites, including Expedia, Orbitz, Hotels.com, and on the hotel's own website. The downside is that it is prepaid and nonrefundable for one night stays and only partially refundable for multi-night stays. So you are taking a risk.

I also used 1-800-Hotels to book 5 nights in Barcelona. That is an upcoming trip (early July). Hopefully, I can come back and report a good experience with that also.

While there have been some very satisfied customers, there are also lots of bad stories http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic..._New_York.html