Booking.com hotel refund help/advice needed!

Esp72

My sister is having a real problem with booking.com and a hotel in Rome refusing to refund her. Timeline is as follows: 

1) using booking.com, she requests hotel booking on 9 July with late check in (10pm). Listing shows late check in charges, payable on arrival. 

2) hotel accepts booking so she pays in full

3) hotel then refuses request for late check in, saying it is offered but not guaranteed

4) she then cancels booking

5) they use ‘non-refundable booking’ loophole to avoid refunding her, even though they originally accepted the booking with the request for late check in.

Both Booking.com and her credit card company say there is nothing they do. The hotel accepted the booking and payment, then refused to refund after THEY turned down the late check in request. 

What can we do? She is £230 out of pocket. Any help or advice gratefully accepted! 

tightauldgit

Without seeing the detailed specifics of what was offered and agreed and booked it's a little hard to say but the bottom line on it is that if booking.com and your credit card are not willing to help then you'd have to pursue a claim against the hotel, which may well be winnable but you'd have to pursue it through an Italian court which probably isn't worth the £230 you're out of pocket. 

Westin

The late checkin is a request and it doesn’t sound like the property can accommodate that request.

The booking flow you describe does not link with the actual online booking process. The request field is just as the name suggests ‘a request’. You could type anything in at that point, it does not unfortunately guarantee anything or form part of the booking contract.

Voyager2002

I would go back to the credit card on the grounds that what was offered was not fit for purpose, as was clear from the late booking request that was made before payment. If she wants to take legal action, remember that the credit card provider is liable in the same way as the hotel, but can be pursued through the English (or Scottish) courts.

Westin

A ‘request’ is however a ‘request’, not a guarantee of a service being offered and fulfilled.

Booking.com say -

Special requests

Special requests cannot be guaranteed – but the property will do its best to meet your needs. You can always make a special request after your booking is complete!

Please write your requests in English or Italian. (optional)

[then there is a box to type in your REQUEST.   I could write anything here, but does not mean I will get it]

Wonka_2

@esp72 I'm not sure whether wording has changed in your posts as there were duplicates and I'd responded to a post which now seems to have disappeared. Did at any point the hotel confirm the late check-in and subsequently refuse it ? Or are you relying on them accepting the booking (which could easily be an automated acceptance) and then refusing the 'request' (which as @Westin says is just a request and not contractual)

Booking.com obviously aren't going to help and credit card company are unlikely to be able to until the service isn't provided (and even then they'll probably refer back to the 'request' clause in Booking.com T&C's)

As a compromise was the stay for more than 1 night and will the hotel refund night 1 to allow it to be booked elsewhere ?

CKhalvashi

Westin said:

The late checkin is a request and it doesn’t sound like the property can accommodate that request.

The booking flow you describe does not link with the actual online booking process. The request field is just as the name suggests ‘a request’. You could type anything in at that point, it does not unfortunately guarantee anything or form part of the booking contract.

That would depend to me on the terms the room was given.

Most will allow a check-in from a certain time until a certain time as standard. There's very little in general that can be done with non-family owned hotels to give this flexibility if not offered from experience.

Most hotels we've stayed at will keep in contact through the day in the event of a late arrival to see where we are/when we are coming. I'll leave in the notes that this is the latest possible time but we should be able to be earlier.

I agree a refund of the first night may be a reasonable compromise here, allowing a change to that hotel the following day (assuming this is a multi-day booking), however this isn't guaranteed.