Booking.com "rewards"

catherined63

I have travelled quite a lot in the last 12 months and used Booking.com for accommodation (which has all been ok). I got a letter through the post from them a while ago offering a cash back reward for travel booked by a certain date over a certain amount. I was travelling in June/July anyway so booked using their discount code. This was for £70 back. In due course this appeared in my Booking.com account as "pending" for payment. After that I've been getting regular emails saying I haven't entered my credit card details so they can't pay back the "reward". I've entered and re-entered my credit card in the form but am still getting emails.
I've approached them through the website contact page, phoned them, emailed customer service to try and find out what's going on but no joy. Having established what I'm enquiring about, it all goes silent. When I phoned I was just told to email customer service, who, after an initial response, just stopped replying with no explanation or acknowledgement.
I had to travel anyway, so no real harm done except that I'm £70 poorer than I thought I was going to be which makes me a bit sad. There are 2 options here: either I really have filled in a form incorrectly but I'm not going to get any help to do it correctly, or this is just a straight scam. They obviously expect me to give up at this point.
I'm just posting this as a) a warning to anyone who gets these letters (I've had another one since), and b) because I'm curious to know if anyone else has had this experience with so-called "rewards" from Booking.com. A quick Google shows that the Guardian's Consumer Champion page ran a piece on this subject back in July.

Sharon87

Always treat cashback as a 'if it happens great, if it doesn't then ok'. I use this mentality with Quidco. I wouldn't pay more for something based on potentially getting cashback.

I've never heard of the booking.com rewards scheme before. Personally I prefer hotels.com or ebookers, they have 'rewards' in place as well that actually work and are reliable. If you don't like how they treat you I'd say don't use them anymore, find an alternative.

Booking.com are a bit pushy with their 'this hotel has been booked xx times in the past 24 hours', so much so they're being fined/investigated, even after being warned previously.