Terrible recent reviews but can't cancel now

Tallulah9360

After some advice please...

This weekend we have a few days away booked in Crete, flight and hotel booked with Secret escapes. As always I did my research on the hotel looking at reviews before we booked in April. For some reason I had another look yesterday and found some pretty horrendous stuff from the last month since they reopened after winter, bed bugs, dirty rooms, rats etc in what is advertised as a 5 star hotel. Typically we were 2 days past the 8 day no cancellation period and our contract is with the hotel so whilst SE are sympathetic they say there is nothing they can do. We've decided to take the hit and book another hotel, keeping the flights.

 SE have contacted the hotel for us about cancellation but given that the manager's responses to poor reviews are borderline abusive I don't have any hope of getting any money back. Is there anything we can do? I know the insurance won't cover us but I did pay by credit card. I don't suppose a charge back is possible, it's pretty clear that if we go what we would get would not be what's advertised but we can't prove that if we don't go and we're not prepared to waste annual leave and cost of flights etc for a horrible time. Just wondered if anyone had had a similar experience and had any advice.

Edit. We haven't yet cancelled and rebooked but are about to. The recent bad reviews are many and the good ones are very suspicious to me, the language used is ridiculous and repetitive and fact they are all new registered users is ringing alarm bells. It would cost us a lot in taxis and time to go and then change hotels as the new one is in a different part of the island and for a 4 night trip it's not worth it.

Voyager2002

My advice: choose a new place and check they have vacancies, but don't actually book yet. Turn up at the booked hotel and verify whether or not what is on offer of an acceptable quality. If it is not what you can reasonably expect, take photos and leave.

I suspect that the recent terrible reviews are from someone seeking to damage the business, hence the abusive responses, and you will find that everything is just fine. If not, you will have a plan and so will waste only a minimal amount of time, and you should then be in a strong position to get back what you paid.

Elliott.T123

Unfortunately as you seem to already know you're in a bit of a catch 22. You cant argue that you didn't get the service you paid for without going, but then if you go and don't get what you expect you will have wasted time and effort.

Sounds an awful situation to be in. I think personally I would look at booking another hotel (on a free cancellation deal) to start the second night of my holiday.

If the first night at the original hotel was awful I would bail out, if not cancel the new booking.

eskbanker

Tallulah9360 said:

We've decided to take the hit and book another hotel, keeping the flights.

Just to be clear, have you just made a decision or actually gone ahead and cancelled anyway?  If the latter, then there isn't anything else you can do now, there certainly won't be any right to pursue your card company....

bagand96

Went away for a cheap break earlier this year with friends, someone else took care of the hotel booking. 

A week before we went someone pointed to some terrible recent reviews of the hotel. Looked at our options but decided to stay with it.

Very pleasantly surprised when we got there, hotel exceeded our expectations, was clean, staff were helpful, rooms were newly refurbished etc

I know it doesn't necessarily help you now OP, but sometimes reviews need to be taken with a pinch of salt. As others have said if you've already booked alternative accommodation there's little you can do. 

Archergirl

Hope you manage to get it sorted, will be interested in the outcome.

CKhalvashi

Elliott.T123 said:

Unfortunately as you seem to already know you're in a bit of a catch 22. You cant argue that you didn't get the service you paid for without going, but then if you go and don't get what you expect you will have wasted time and effort.

Sounds an awful situation to be in. I think personally I would look at booking another hotel (on a free cancellation deal) to start the second night of my holiday.

If the first night at the original hotel was awful I would bail out, if not cancel the new booking.

The problem with this strategy would likely be that the hotel would claim the room is reserved and available for OP's use, thus negating any claim in this case also.

There's no catch 22 here legally as I can see it, there is no right to cancel the hotel, there is no right to a refund in any event, a room has been reserved and is available.

Whether arguments could be made for quality are possibly different, however with a contract directly with the hotel, this would need to be through the Greek court system, which would ultimately likely cost more than it will solve.

Indout96

Have you checked the reviewers profiles to see what their other reviews are, are the always negative ? in which case ignore them or are they normally positive in which case they are probably true.
Also check all the negative reviews lately for the same type of writing / spelling mistakes, we have found that a big batch of the same type of reviews at the same (ish) time tend to be from the same family / group setting up multiple accounts to back each other up in the search for compo.  
We went through this last April in Naples, reviews dropped through the floor, many were stupid complaints about where the hotel was (they knew that when they booked) and many were about it being used for school groups (Italian) which it was. We went in the end and it was absolutely fine, there was a little noise between around 6-7.30 pm when they were all getting ready to go out but other than that it was perfect.

stoneman

And as you are aware, people tend to post bad reviews afe more than they post good, so take that into consideration