Hotel deducted full amount from card at booking

littlerock

We travel quite often in the UK and at the end of March are going to be in Somerset for the weekend. We stayed in a village inn there last year and thought we would book it again. Last year I was asked to supply my credit card details in advance but was not charged until we left.

We used booking.com last year and so booked the hotel again this year with them, on 3 Feb. I was surprised when my credit card bill for February arrived to see that I had been charged the full amount of the room on the day of booking. This was not any low special rate to guarantee the room. The room was advertised with free cancellation before 7 March but no where said that full payment would be taken on booking.

So I wrote to booking.com about it and they referred me to the hotel's policies where it states that "You will be charged a prepayment of the total price at any time". Anytime being when you book it apparently.

As I say we travel regularly and I am happy to provide my card to reserve the room and against the possibility that they can take the full amount if I am a no show. But I do object to being charged the full amount 7 weeks in advance without any discount, when there is nothing about this in their entry on booking.com

Anyone else had anything like this?

Sharon87

One of the reasons I don't like booking.com you never know when they'll charge you! I use hotels.com and it gives you the choice 'pay now' or 'pay at hotel'. I tend to pay straight away if it's abroad or for work.

hotels.com - also you get 1 free night for booking 10 nights and they're on Quidco.

It's nothing unusual being charged at time of booking for hotels though.

littlerock

thanks for the info.

I am surprised you find you are regularly charged the whole amount of the hotel bill on booking. I have not found this. Usually if you are, it is with a discount and non refundable.The alternative is to provide your credit card to the hotel who will usually register it, sometimes deducting a notional amount to make sure it is valid, and then charge you at the end of your stay.

I am writing a book at present which involves a lot of fieldwork and have been on the road quite a lot. In the last year I must have stayed in at least 24 hotels of varying levels. I do not choose prepay hotels even those with a discounted price ,( which this one did not offer) because I need to be flexible about my itinerary . I have only been charged the full amount when booking twice, once when it explicitly stated it on the hotels web entry and the second time when they were a newly opened b and b and apologised as they had not meant to.

I have never previously booked anywhere that has charged the full amount on booking AND concealed their intention to do so with weasel words in the Ts and C's about "you will be charged a prepayment of the full amount at any time" . It is that which has annoyed me. I have looked them up, they are "only" a village Inn but not cheap and bookings look healthy.

System

they done it to me too. I went sick when £500 went off my debit card straight away. I rand up and cancelled as the flights were too expensive to go and they did refund me the money. They were very helpful on the phone actually