Wembley area - hotel to avoid!

scurr

Thanks - appreciate any help. Don't really expect any money back but would like them to acknowledge the cockup at least!

MyRubyRed

Scurr, response received from Agent as follows:

Thank you for your interest in our company. Once a booking is confirmed on our system, we will send a confirmation to the hotel and they will honour the booking.

However, we have a separate department, which works on such cases when the hotel being sold out or closed for any reasons.

Once we get such information, we contact our guests informing the situation and providing an option for relocation to a sister concern hotel or a hotel of similar number of star or above.

However, if the guest is at the hotel and they are unable to accept the booking due to being overbooked, in such cases the guest needs to contact us and we will arrange an immediate relocation.

Yours sincerely



Cathy W
Customer Care Team Hotels.com

I think the grey area here is whether the Agent was contacted as soon as the boys were turned away from the hotel or if they just made their own arrangements.If it was the former then I think the Agent could argue that they had not been asked to help and could not therefore be held liable for additional cost incurred. You may however wish to speak to the "separate Dept" Cathy refers to in her mail to see if they had been given prior notification of problems with the hotel and failed to advise you in advance.
Let us know how you get on

scurr

Thanks very much for your help. I've been on the phone most of the afternoon to hotels.com! Here's the email I sent the new email address they've given me!

I booked one night's accommodation at Helen's Hotel, 20 Craven Park, London NW10 for the night of Sat 19th June.

My son and his friend travelled overnight from Glasgow to London to attend a concert at Wembley but on arrival at the hotel were told that all bookings had been cancelled. They arrived at the hotel at 12.00 and as nobody was there or answering the door, went away and returned at 1pm, then 2pm, then 3pm - when they waited on the doorstep. A man arrived at 3.30pm and told them that all bookings had been cancelled - no explanation why.

They then had to find alternative accommodation - on a Saturday - in a strange city - near Wembley where a sell-out concert was on - with only a few hours before the gig. The hotel they finally found charged them £100, far more than they had budgeted for, but they had to take the room or miss the concert looking for a cheaper room.

I don't understand why either hotels.com or the hotel itself didn't inform me that the booking was cancelled. This ruined the weekend for two 19 year olds and cost them a lot of money they can scarcely afford. If I cancelled a booking without notice or failed to turn up, the hotel would quite rightly charge me for the room.

I would be grateful if you could investigate what happened at the weekend and let me know. One of the call centre operatives I have spoken to over the past week tried to tell me - to insist - that I had phoned and cancelled the booking the day before - not true, and that would be a huge coincidence if I'd phoned and cancelled a hotel which was closed anyway! Another operative gave me the phone number of the hotel (a different phone number to the one I had been phoning all week which has never been answered) - this number turned out to be Hotel Solutions Direct, not Helen's Hotel in London. Another operative gave me the email address [EMAIL="customer.service@!!!!!!!!!!!"]customer.service@!!!!!!!!!!![/EMAIL] and assured me I would receive a response to my email within 24 hours - this hasn't happened either. I am very disappointed in the service from hotels.com in addition to the disaster of the hotel itself.

I look forward to hearing from you.

MyRubyRed

Scurr
I think you are going off at a tangent and aregetting tied up into an argument about (poor) customer service.
You have to try to determine whether Hotels.com knew there was a problem with the hotel prior to your son's arrival though I doubt that they are going to admit to the same.
I think its clear that the boys did not contact hotels.com when they discovered the problem and without the first bit of evidence there lies the problem in achieving your goal.

scurr

Update - just wanted to let people know that hotels.com have finally responded - here's their reply:

Thank you for your correspondence with Hotels.com and I was concerned to learn of your son's dissatisfaction regarding his recent trip to London.

I apologise that your son arrived at Helen's Hotel to be advised that he had no reservation. No one from Helen's Hotel contact us to advise of any error with this reservation in order to contact you before your son's arrival and relocate them to another hotel.

Taking into account your experience, I appreciate your trip was not as we would have hoped, I am pleased to advise that we are going to refund your credit card in the amount of £100.00. Please contact us on 028 90 166 381 to provide credit card details in order to process the refund. Once we receive these details please allow 7-10 working days for this amount to appear on your credit card statement.

I apologise for the annoyance that this may have caused to you. The company is actively working to improve service levels and your feedback has proved to be invaluable.


Kind regards,
Jonathan Pearce
Customer Relations Department
help@hotels.com

techno12

scurr wrote: »

Taking into account your experience, I appreciate your trip was not as we would have hoped, I am pleased to advise that we are going to refund your credit card in the amount of £100.00.

Double-check that you get the £100. I was double booked a few months ago and relocated to a much less convenient hotel. When Hotels.com sent the standard mail asking for feedback, I told them the tale and they got back to me quickly, apologised and offered a partial refund of £25. However, the amount I received a few days later was £14 something. As it's a US company I'm assuming they got their £ and $ mixed up ;0

I didn't bother asking for the difference as I wasn't really angling for compensation anyway.

scurr

Thanks for the heads up - I'll keep an eye on that!

omen666

hotels.com are pretty good in these situations. Wouldnt surprise me if they strike these off now