Sick to death of best rate guarantees!!!! MARTIN CAN YOU INVESTIGATE?

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?

I would love for Martin to do an investigation of these scams.

Zebra

I'm sure you have a good point, and don't want to sound condescending, but why don't you shop around before booking, rather than relying on such guarantees?

If you are not having any joy with them direct have you tried Consumer Direct or Advertising Standards Authority

barron_2

Untill you press book on the site,you wouldnt know if the rooms were available.
It would prob come back with availability check.Untill yor recieve conformation,then you would not know if you had rooms or not.
Only suppliers that have bought allocation,ie Med etc will offload if not sold,to recoup some cost,in which case the hotel would NOT price match anyway.
We get allocations to hotels we represent in Mallorca,at moment alot of our allocation is sold.BUT we still sell on availability,if the hotel has no allocation,then our client is offered alternative or credit/debit card is not charged,if we cant get it,neither can others,unless they have pre bought their allocations.
Hence Tour Ops doing late deals to off load their stock.
Hope this makes sense (rough night)!!
Happy Hols

donna

They called back and would not honour the guarantee, saying that find-rooms did not use the same res system as them and that even if their site gave immediate confirmation it would not register at the hotel immediately as it would if i booked with them. What a load of twaddle, who cares if it shows on the hotel res system now or next week!!! If find-rooms give instant conf then thats good enough for me.

Anyway i canceled the room with Holiday Inn and booked the exact same room with Find-rooms and saved myself £187! I also went through Quidco and got £8.80 cashback

I was going to boycot HI and their group but thought i would be cutting off my nose to spite my face. At the end of the day i got a good deal and thats all i was looking for.