Absolutely sick of Best rate guarantees!!!

donna

After booking a room with Days Inn last month and been given the total run around by a totally obnoxious American man when i found the room cheaper on another website, i vowed to never book with such a company again.

Well once again i have been sucked in. I booked a room with Holiday Inn Express through their best rate guaranteed link. It is for the Park Royal for 3 nights, total cost for a double with cont brekky was £297. I then found it through the website find-rooms.com at £110!!!! for the same room same board basis same dates. I checked the HI t&c with a fine tooth comb and then called the number(0870!!!) provided on there website to make a claim. They are supposed to match the price and give you a further 10% off for your trouble. Well 3 hours later and after being promised a call back twice i finally get a call. First they say the room i have found is dearer as they charge £99 and find-rooms charge £110. I politely point out that the £110 is the total cost for the 3 nights. He then calls me back and says it doesn't qualify with their t&c as the room is not immediately bookable on the find-rooms website. I point out that i am on the website as we speak and am up to the point of pressing confirm after putting all my CC details in. He then points me in the direction of the t&c of the find-rooms website, point number 6 - All documentation will be sent out by email, unless otherwise agreed. Therefore if you have not received your documentation within 1 hour of booking, please contact us by either email or telephone so we can arrange for your documentation to be re-sent.
I point out that this has nothing to do with the ability to make the booking immediately on the website and that it is just telling you that the documentation may take upto 1 hour to come through on e-mail and that the confirmation is still as instant as it is on their website. I point out that the e-mail that they sent reguarding my booking with them took 20 mins. He then says he has to go away and double check everything and will try to call me back within an hour. I'm not holding my breath.

Why do these companies have these so called guarantees if all they try and do is wiggle their way out of them?

I have spent hours wasting my time with this. All i wanted was a cheap but nice room in London for me and my daughter(all £26 TL rooms gone for our dates)

Has anyone else had trouble with this kind of thing?

britboi

I have had considerable success with the Best Rate Guarantee (BRG) offered by the Cendant Corporations brands (Days Inn, Ramada, Super 8, Travelodge, Wingate Inns, Amerihost, Knights Inn, Howard Johnson) for my travels in the USA. Over the past 18 months I have used the BRG to my advantage for a total of 38 free nights stays on trips to the USA, resulting in a saving of over $3,000 on hotel expenses.

On the few occassions when my claim has been rejected it has been because the room types did not correspond sufficiently to make a direct comparison.

My tip for a successful claim is to read the terms and conditions carefully and make sure your claim complies with them. It's not difficult - but you have to pay close attention to all the details.

donna

Hi Britboi,

believe me i did read the t&c very carefully.

Their first excuse was that find-rooms.com were charging £110 for the room and their price was only £99. I had to point out that the £110 price was for all 3 nights with the competing website.

They then called back and tried to say that the room was not immedately bookable online, but then i gave them proof proving otherwise.

They called me again saying that if i made the reservation through find-rooms it would not show on the park royals hotels computer immediately as it would if i booked with them, i then had a very lengthy conversation with a manager about the fact that what she was saying was nowhere in there t&c. All the way through the conversation she just kept saying ah-ha, ah-ha, ah-ha, but still refusing to match the price.

I should of known really that they wouldn't give me over £200 back.

It is just a scam. I found a better price fairly and squarely and fullfilled everyone of their t&c, it was clearly obvious that they were just trying to worm their way out of it!!

MissBehaving

Hey Donna....
I work for Travelodge so was well chuffed that you mentioned our £26 rooms!
BAR only really works when booked directly with the hotel. The problem with booking through companies that sell rooms on behalf of the hotel is that they do not always have 'live' rates. The rate that they probably sold to you was a rate that the hotel had given them a week ago, whilst the hotel probably realised that it needed more rooms sold, so dropped their own rates.

Are you sure that the internet site has charged you a per room rate and not per person rate?

Not sure why they have not kept to their word!

Your not having much luck are you?