Complaints about Booking.com’s service?

GreenManCov

Hi,

I’ve been with Booking.com for several years, and had moved up to Genius Level 3. My old international provider decided to cancel my old email account with very little warning. When I tried, in November, to change my details with Booking.com, it didn’t work - and when resolved, the old email had expired. The new email address took me back to Genius Level 1.

At the beginning of December, I was told my details would be passed to their Senior Support team, who would be able to manually return me to Genius Level 3. Two weeks later, I called again, and they confirmed it was with Senior Support - but Customer Services wouldn’t let me talk to this team, or contact them for an update, themselves. Consequently, we were unable to book the Christmas break we’d planned.

Today, I had to make 4 calls about this same issue:
1. The first person insisted I was on Genius Level 3 on my new account. When I said otherwise, she said she’d send an email so I could send her a screenshot, and hung up.
2. The second person said they were exploring the situation, and hung up.
3. Caller number 3 said they needed to phone me back, for security purposes. They wouldn’t confirm whether they had my home number (I don’t use a mobile, and my wife is at work) - when I then insisted on speaking to their supervisor, they hung up.
4. The last caller confirmed they would use my home number. When they came back to me, they finally said that it was impossible to change me back to Genius Level 3 without sending an email to my old address for me to verify myself - even with my old records having the same telephone numbers, and me being able to confirm previous booking IDs and PINs.

As somebody with IT experience, I know it’s easy to change these details. I’m also furious that I’ve been messed around with contradictory information for nearly 6 months. Whilst it’s relatively easy to complain about a specific booking, how do I complain about this company, themselves? It seems ridiculous that I’ll lose money on future bookings, just because they are inflexible in their policies.

My last caller said he’d ‘make a note’ about the way I’d been treated, but I don’t expect this will go any further. Does anybody have any suggestions for another course of action?

flaneurs_lobster

I think you are rather over-estimating the value of the "Genius Levels". 

The way that prices yo-yo on that site makes the so-called discounts pretty meaningless if the lower prices are available to pleb level punters the next day.

elsien

Yes, I’m not sure why not being on genius level 3 meant you had to cancel a break completely. I don’t think I’m on any of their levels, or if I am I haven’t noticed but I still seem to get some good enough deals. 

Albermarle

flaneurs_lobster said:

I think you are rather over-estimating the value of the "Genius Levels". 

The way that prices yo-yo on that site makes the so-called discounts pretty meaningless if the lower prices are available to pleb level punters the next day.

For sure you can never be sure about the validity of these discounts. However my recent experience in recently booking one night in a hotel was as follows:

Hotel direct price including Best Western Discount - £157
Booking. com price £160
Minus 10% Genius discount - £144

Then 

Two nights booking for two rooms ( different hotel)  £700 direct with hotel
Booking.com online £665; mobile only price £625 
10% Genius discount £564

It seems to be genuine savings, but who knows.

TheSpectator

It's a lot of old cobblers imo (the Genius level thing).

On the very odd occassion I've looked I get a better price than my partner despite being on a lower level apparently.

flaneurs_lobster

Of the half-dozen occasions I've used them, two stays have ended with a dispute at checkout over the total payable.

I'll use them as a hotel finder in an unfamiliar location but have generally found booking direct will give a better rate.

Albermarle

flaneurs_lobster said:

Of the half-dozen occasions I've used them, two stays have ended with a dispute at checkout over the total payable.

I'll use them as a hotel finder in an unfamiliar location but have generally found booking direct will give a better rate.

I used to do that a lot when I was travelling for work. However at one time hotels were leaned on heavily not to undercut the booking sites, so usually a free breakfast was the best you could hope for.
Then I think the booking sites got investigated and had to ease off the pressure on the hotels and you could sometimes get a better deal direct.
However ( as detailed in my previous post) my recent experience is that you can nowadays get some good deals with booking.com depending of course on location, timing etc .
I booked one in Spain for July and could not get a discount anywhere. 
I must have used them well over 50 times, maybe even 100, and never had an issue at checkout, so you must have been unlucky.