AMOMA.COM - anyone used before?
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Wesker56 - that is one amazing and awesome post by you. Wow, you've really lifted the lid behind the practise not only of amoma but many other similar hotel co's. I've bookmarked your post so i can refer to next year when i do my travelling and booking. Im not on here saying amoma are bad, or good, I havent used them and i may choose to. But Wesker - wow, very sharp post. Thank you!Val
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I am writing to make you aware of a company that is operating under the name of Amoma. In early November I planned a trip to the UK and wanted to spend the first 2 nights in the center of London. I couldn't find availability for the hotel I wanted to stay at when using Booking.com. This was for November 26th and 27th. Then a pop up appeared from Amoma saying they had the room I wanted so I completed the online booking and had to pay upfront with PayPal. They charged me $240. A few days passed and I didn't receive a confirmation and felt a bit worried. I called the hotel in London (st Giles hotel) and they had no record. I then called Amoma and they assured me I would get a reservation code and confirmation before I left for my trip. This did arrive and so I trusted it was all ok. I travelled to the UK from Florida (a 20 hour journey in all) and got a taxi to the hotel. On arrival I was told I had no booking and there was no record of my name. The receptionist tried to call Amoma but no one was answering the phone. They had no other rooms. They said they had never heard of this company. I was traveling alone, with no phone, female aged 50. I was told the concierge would help me find alternative accommodation but the line had about 30 people waiting. I was panicked and so I left my suitcase there and walked around London trying to find another hotel. As you can imagine I was furious, tired and upset. It was one of the busiest Christmas shopping weekends in London. I eventually found a tatty, run down guest house that offered me a tiny single room that was in disrepair. No facilities, just a bed. I had no choice but to book it and it cost £308 ($374). When I got home from my 2 week vacation I tried to sort this out and then the fun really began. I must have had 8 different people replying to my emails (do not bother calling this outfit as they don't answer or if they eventually do - they do not speak good English). I was asked for proof of my other booking, had to get a full invoice sent from them, I was even asked for a description of what the receptionist at the st Giles hotel looked like!!! It took an almighty effort to get refunded by emailing them daily, no explanation of what happened or apology, and I was eventually credited $240 after opening a case with PayPal. I also insisted they pay the difference of my original booking cost versus the hotel I was forced to find on my own (approx $140). This is still not resolved. This company should NOT be in business. I wasted precious time walking around London and it ruined the start of my vacation completely. Avoid at all costs!0
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I am writing to make you aware of a company that is operating under the name of Amoma. In early November I planned a trip to the UK and wanted to spend the first 2 nights in the center of London. I couldn't find availability for the hotel I wanted to stay at when using Booking.com. This was for November 26th and 27th. Then a pop up appeared from Amoma saying they had the room I wanted so I completed the online booking and had to pay upfront with PayPal. They charged me $240. A few days passed and I didn't receive a confirmation and felt a bit worried. I called the hotel in London (st Giles hotel) and they had no record. I then called Amoma and they assured me I would get a reservation code and confirmation before I left for my trip. This did arrive and so I trusted it was all ok. I travelled to the UK from Florida (a 20 hour journey in all) and got a taxi to the hotel. On arrival I was told I had no booking and there was no record of my name. The receptionist tried to call Amoma but no one was answering the phone. They had no other rooms. They said they had never heard of this company. I was traveling alone, with no phone, female aged 50. I was told the concierge would help me find alternative accommodation but the line had about 30 people waiting. I was panicked and so I left my suitcase there and walked around London trying to find another hotel. As you can imagine I was furious, tired and upset. It was one of the busiest Christmas shopping weekends in London. I eventually found a tatty, run down guest house that offered me a tiny single room that was in disrepair. No facilities, just a bed. I had no choice but to book it and it cost £308 ($374). When I got home from my 2 week vacation I tried to sort this out and then the fun really began. I must have had 8 different people replying to my emails (do not bother calling this outfit as they don't answer or if they eventually do - they do not speak good English). I was asked for proof of my other booking, had to get a full invoice sent from them, I was even asked for a description of what the receptionist at the st Giles hotel looked like!!! It took an almighty effort to get refunded by emailing them daily, no explanation of what happened or apology, and I was eventually credited $240 after opening a case with PayPal. I also insisted they pay the difference of my original booking cost versus the hotel I was forced to find on my own (approx $140). This is still not resolved. This company should NOT be in business. I wasted precious time walking around London and it ruined the start of my vacation completely. Avoid at all costs!
£308 for a two week stay in a room in a guest house in London is extremely cheap. No wonder there were no other facilities!! The usual price for London is £300+ per person per night. And that too is on a room only basis with maybe tea / coffee making facilities and a bathroom with a shower.Smiles are as perfect a gift as hugs...
..one size fits all... and nobody minds if you give it back.☆.。.:*・° Housework is so much easier without the clutter ☆.。.:*・°SPC No. 5180 -
springdreams wrote: »£308 for a two week stay in a room in a guest house in London is extremely cheap. No wonder there were no other facilities!! The usual price for London is £300+ per person per night. And that too is on a room only basis with maybe tea / coffee making facilities and a bathroom with a shower.
They were away for two weeks, the stay in London was only for two nights.
I don't think you are on the right site if you think a usual price for a London hotel is over £300 per person per night, I've very rarely paid over £100 for a double room.
You presumably rarely rough it at the ritz or Browns on the basis of the rates you've quoted, though Romford should be a bit cheaper.0 -
DO NOT USE AMOMA.COM- they are a fraudulent website and con artists! Went to book Anker Hotel in Oslo through Amoma.com for £82 for 2x nights. Once we got to the payment gateway, it said the deal had timed out but there was a private room in the Anker Hostel next door for the same price. We did not want to stay in a hostel but thought a private room wouldn’t be too bad. When we checked in to the hostel they said we had booked an 8 bed dorm. We tried to call Amoma.com who said we had booked the dorm not the private option. We also met several people in the hostel lobby who were complaining to reservations that they had also booked a private room through Amoma.com, only to check in and be told they were staying in dorm rooms. The hostel said they were trying to block Amoma.com as they were illegally selling non-existent rooms or frequently false advertising and the hostel were constantly dealing with customer complaints by guests who had booked through Amoma.com. We will be contacting our bank to obtain a full refund for fraud. Amoma.com customer services only hang up on us when we try and ring to complain!0
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AMOMA deliberately hide the £40 cancellation charge in the "offer Conditions" which you only see if you click onto the highlighted in blue word.
Even though the price is advertised as flexible refundable; they hide the charge dishonestly, so that can profiteer from cancellations.
They will be hiding behind the good name of Trivago, who must know AMOMA is tarnishing their own reputation, but once a company gets beyond a certain size they seem not to bother about reputation so much.0 -
AMOMA deliberately hide the £40 cancellation charge in the "offer Conditions" which you only see if you click onto the highlighted in blue word.
Even though the price is advertised as flexible refundable; they hide the charge dishonestly, so that can profiteer from cancellations.
They will be hiding behind the good name of Trivago, who must know AMOMA is tarnishing their own reputation, but once a company gets beyond a certain size they seem not to bother about reputation so much.
I would say it is not hidden, if you try the desktop version of their website, you can easily see their cancellation policy at the bottom of the payments page, without having to click elsewhere.
It reads:
Cancellation policy- 40 € if you cancel or modify your booking between dd Month 2017 to dd Month 2017
- 340 € if you cancel or modify your booking starting dd Month 2017
I've checked their mobile version and it reads the same without needing to click anywhere else.0 -
Unfortunately I did not read the bad reviews here before booking with Amoma...
DO. NOT. USE. AMOMA!
Exasperating, frustrating, incompetent, broken travel booking agent.
I booked a hotel through them (via Trivago) for me and 4 friends who were all relying on me.
The original booking went through, but then was cancelled because the hotel was overbooked - this is despite Amoma showing the hotel had availability.
I understand this sometimes happens (although in today's world of real time updates it really shouldn't), but the pain I went through to fix this thing that was not my mistake was extraordinary.
I spent the next 1.5 weeks calling Amoma umpteen times, spending hours on hold and speaking to a dozen different people trying to fix the problem.
They could not find us a hotel around the same location, and because of the season I could not find one either within the same budget, so with no choice we agreed to be put in another hotel that was out of the centre for the same price.
It took them an age to confirm this, and then when I rang the hotel to check, the hotel did not have the booking.
After copious amount of phone calls to Amoma later, where the supervisor refused to speak to me, the issue appeared sorted out when I called the hotel to check, although I am still waiting for written confirmation from the hotel at this point - so time will tell...
While everyone at Amoma was polite, there were several times where I was not called back, where responses took too long to arrive, where I was on hold for over half an hour, where my call got cut off several times forcing me to ring back and start from scratch as no one called me back, I had to explain the circumstances about 16 times to different operators and they have this stupid system of first putting you through to switchboard who recite your whole booking details (which in my case had been cancelled) before putting you through to someone who can actually help you.
It. Just. Did. My. Head. In.
If you have a look online, there are heaps of complaints about Amoma. Be warned!0 -
I just booked a hotel in Paris via Amoma and while it did go through (eventually) I should have read up on them before booking. I feel I got them on a good day where their dodgy practices didn't leave me out of pocket, but can easily see why it has for others and could have for me.
I came across them via Trivago. I bought a Eurostar ticket for this weekend a few weeks ago via Eurostar.Snap (which is amazing by the way - £25 each way!!!) and had been looking over hotels for the last week or two, not seeing prices vary by much so in no hurry really.
It did strike me as BS that most sites, like Expedia, Last minute, Booking.com etc always had the room with some splash along the lines of '6 other people are looking at this room right now' or 'One room only left!!!' accompanying the search results. These seemed to be exactly the same a week later viewing the exact same listing (I'm guessing that 'one last room' must be really crappy that they can't shift it)
So the cheapest were Booking.com for the hotel I'd decided on and on the day I came to book (yesterday) they seem to be beaten by about £30 a night by Amoma.
I'd never heard of Amoma, but felt they must be legit as I'd come across them directly from Trivago, who I always thought were reputable.
I booked the room and immediately got a message saying my booking was declined, and the money was taken or 'pre authorized' and to look for another room.
I knew I had plenty of money in the my account so couldn't understand why it was declined. It was around midnight so I couldn't call my bank, my balance had reduced by the booking amount but wasn't showing the payment reference yet.
Part of me assumed it was the bank rejecting the payment or holding it until they could confirm with me but I had no way of knowing for sure until the next morning.
I called Amoma, but was on hold for too long and was falling asleep so left it till the next day.
I woke up to see a missed call from Amoma, assuming they'd called me back but this couldn't be the case as I left no message and my number was withheld.
An hour later they called again and I answered. They proceeded to tell me the room I wanted was booked, stating that someone must have booked it just as I was looking. I said that was BS as I'd been watching this hotel for a while with 'one room left' and the second I try to book, someone beats me to it. They insisted this was the case and then proceeded to offer me the next higher priced room at the original room rate.
I voiced my concern at the fact the money had already left my account and they insisted it was authorized but not taken, and if I didn't want to take the new room being offered, it would be refunded immediately and everything cancelled. Despite this all seeming very suspect, they were trying to offer me a more expensive room for no extra cost.
Once she got my permission to 'try' the new room she went to book it. There was a pause and it went through. I tried to push for breakfast included in the price but she wasn't having it.
I've emailed the hotel and they confirmed my booking.
On the call, It felt like Amoma was basically going through the same room offerings I could see, from lowest to highest, and after my first choice was declined they would have tried each tier until one was bookable. I suspect it would have been at my original lowest price, but can't confirm as we only got as far as the second choice.
Having read through this thread, I feel I dodged a bullet (provided nothing happens to my personal data and card details) and won't be using them again - mainly for peace of mind.
I've written to Trivago as the experience has lowered my respect for them through this and going forward for future trips etc I'll definitely be checking MSE, BEFORE, booking with anyone.0 -
Have read through all the threads some interesting points
there is the mention of Trivago, bookingcom all these web sites are like kayak, laterooms, expedia etc and now trip advisor has joined.
They are all Online Travel Agents and they take a commission starting at 15% and can go up to 50%. In most cases this is added to the price of the accommodation.
As this is a moneysaving web site to help people save money going direct to the accommodation provider will be the best way to save money and get the best deal.
Many hotel web sites are now advertising guaranteed best price booked direct. The accommodation provider is forced to give a minimum of 15% in commission they have little choice but to put the price up to compensate
If you see a hotel/accommodation that you are interested in google the name and see what it is direct check all the T&C's for cancelations book direct if best price and T&C's suit you
In this day and age nearly everyone has there own web site. Don't worry about phoning let them know you seen a room on an OTA for £??? what is the direct price as no commission0
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