Booking.com Price Match accepted - then refusing to refund!

mmedia123

I booked a hotel through Booking.com and submitted a price match guarantee. They accepted this and told me to pay the hotel directly and at check out, I should provide Booking.com with my invoice and then I will be refunded - I have proof of all of this.

On the day of check out, I contacted them on live chat. All seemed fine and they said to provide my bank statement as well as the invoice once it has cleared with my bank. 

I came back on live chat the day after, however, it was not working. It appears I had been blocked from using live chat. I also noticed my booking had been canceled (despite me already staying there, paying, and checking out).

I then called Booking.com and they basically said they will not be providing any refund due to my account history?! Yet, this is my first ever booking with them!

Is this legally acceptable? How can they agree to price match something and promise a refund and then just refuse to? I believe there is a breach of the Misrepresentation Act 1967 here.

I have tried emailing their head office and just got a generic response back with the same thing told me on the phone. 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, it appears Booking.com is scamming people here as I can see it has happened to someone else on the forum too.

y3sitsm3

mmedia123 said:

I booked a hotel through Booking.com and submitted a price match guarantee. They accepted this and told me to pay the hotel directly and at check out, I should provide Booking.com with my invoice and then I will be refunded - I have proof of all of this.

On the day of check out, I contacted them on live chat. All seemed fine and they said to provide my bank statement as well as the invoice once it has cleared with my bank. 

I came back on live chat the day after, however, it was not working. It appears I had been blocked from using live chat. I also noticed my booking had been canceled (despite me already staying there, paying, and checking out).

I then called Booking.com and they basically said they will not be providing any refund due to my account history?! Yet, this is my first ever booking with them!

Is this legally acceptable? How can they agree to price match something and promise a refund and then just refuse to? I believe there is a breach of the Misrepresentation Act 1967 here.

I have tried emailing their head office and just got a generic response back with the same thing told me on the phone. 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, it appears Booking.com is scamming people here as I can see it has happened to someone else on the forum too.

It happening to one other person is hardly indicative of a "scam."  They're a large company, if they were "scamming" people like this the internet would be awash with stories about it.  It's hardly worth their while to scam a few customers every now and again.  It's absolute chump-change to a company of their size.

Ironically I suspect the reason for them doing this is that they think you are trying to scam them.

They're a Dutch company and state that Dutch law is applicable.  You could try https://secure.booking.com/dispute_resolution.en-gb.html or https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr/main/index.cfm but if you hit a brick wall you're realistically going to have to drop it.  Taking this to a court in Holland would be a waste of time and money.