Accor Hotels Best Price Guarantee - big problems, help needed!

wombler

Hi, I'm looking for any advice or assistance which can be offered regarding a current issue i'm having with Accor hotels. I've got a long and boring story which i'll try and surmise as briefly as possible (which is not very, unfortunately). Basically their Best Price Guarantee, here:

http://www.accorhotels.com/gb/garantie/conditions.shtml

- offers to match any “equivalent rate” found on another website and give you another 10% discount on top. I wanted to book a trip to Bordeaux and found three nights in the Novotel Bordeaux Central there on lastminute.com for £244 (2 x standard room, 2 adults, 3 nights). I then went to the accorhotels.com website, found the guarantee and decided to take advantage of their guarantee. Hence I read all the terms and conditions to make completely sure that I met them and then, satisfied that it did, went ahead and booked at their lowest rate of approx £350 (in euros equiv. again standard room, 2 adults, 3 nights) which was a non-refundable rate. I then immediately filled in their online claim form.

24 hours later they replied and said it didn’t meet the requirements because it was a “package rate” (I assume they mean one where you have to book transport or other services to get it) so I went back to lastminute.com and checked - I got right through to the credit card page and I was definitely only booking the room, nothing else. So I wrote back and told them.

That was on Friday. I didn’t get any response by Tuesday so I phoned the UK reservations number, who said I needed to dial a French number for customer services. So I did, and they said they’d look into it. I STILL had no response by yesterday, so I called back and they said that someone would respond. Finally today I got a very vague email back saying that my claim wasn’t valid:

“according to the Lowest rate guarantee general sales conditions, the sales conditions of the rate you booked on our Accor Website have to be exactly the same than those you found on the competitor website”

I went back and checked their conditions (link above) and nowhere in any of them does it say that the sales conditions (I assume they mean the cancellation terms etc) have to be identical. I am 99% sure that my claim matches all their terms. So I called them up in France, again, and they were incredibly rude (I always try to be polite on the phone – I wouldn’t describe myself as an angry customer) and refused point blank to tell me which of the conditions my claim failed to reach. They said I had to email again if I wanted a further response. Which I did, and I got another very vague email back, with nonsensical sentences like:

“After new further investigations, the Best Price Guarantee offer is the guarantee of the best price and not the guarantee of the reduction which could be applied when this offer is applied to the booking .”

Anyway, I could continue, but basically I am pretty sure I am right and entitled to this discount guarantee. Can anyone offer any advice or assistance at all in how to proceed further? I really don’t want to let this go on principal more than anything – I’d like either the discount, or a reasonable explanation of which of their written terms my claim didn’t match, or alternatively a refund so I can book at lastminute.com at the rate they refuse to give me (but they refused point blank to consider a refund as it is a non-refundable rate I booked and apparently customer services can’t overturn that – which sounds very dubious to me). The way they’ve treated me is shocking, at best dis-honest, at worst possibly illegal?!

What should I do?!

Incapuppy

wombler wrote: »

I went back and checked their conditions (link above) and nowhere in any of them does it say that the sales conditions (I assume they mean the cancellation terms etc) have to be identical.

Do you mean this? It says here that the sales conditions do have to be identical.

Sales of conditions The sales conditions associated with the rate on another Internet site must be the same as the sales conditions of the rate booked on Accor Internet sites in order for the Best Price Guarantee to apply.
This concerns in particular:

- prepayment and deposit requirements
- cancellation conditions
- conditions regarding modification of the reservation

wombler

Yes, I saw that, but to all intents and purposes the sales rates are identical - both require 100% prepayment and have no cancellation or refund available. They're just called different things - the one I booked through accor is a "hotdeals" and the lastminute one is a "package deal" (even though it's not part of a package). I guess the wording of the small print may be different, but that's always going to be the case. I guess maybe this is all a big con then - surely they could always use this excuse not to honour any claims at all! It really is most frustrating - i'd assumed this was going to be a simple process!

Incapuppy

I hope someone else with more experience can help out (my post was just a bit of a shot in the dark, sorry)

dmg24

I haven't looked at the website, but from the experience of many of us with Easyjethotels and Ramada, the hotel chain will do anything they can to get out of paying out, including a technicality such as the rates being called different things.

Edit: Have just checked both websites, they look identical to me.

I would reply to them reiterating that the website offers a best rate match plus another 10%, and possibly refer to how their website states that the claim process is 'simple'! x

wombler

Hi dmg24, thanks for looking into it. I'm waiting for a response to my latest email currently - it basically asks them to tell me which of their conditions I haven't met and why not. Unfortunately given their previous replies I don't hold out much hope that they will. It doesn't help that English is clearly not a first language for them (fair enough if they're in France, but it does make things more difficult). Their policy seems to be to fob me off or ignore me until I give up! But I'm not going to do that just yet.

The woman I spoke to today said words to the effect that their guarantee "isn't an obligation, it's just a marketing offer"!

budgetflyer

By package rate, I suspect they mean a "prepaid + no refund" rate which on Last Minute is much less than the "unrestricted"pay on checkout rates also avail on Last Minute + Accor.
If that is what you are comparing, then it really isn't like for like

Sales of conditions

The sales conditions associated with the rate on another Internet site must be the same as the sales conditions of the rate booked on https://www.novotel.com in order for the Best Price Guarantee to apply.
This concerns in particular:

- prepayment and deposit requirements
- cancellation conditions
- conditions regarding modification of the reservation

TBeckett100

amazes me. my boss taught me something when he found me trying to save £5 on airport parking - wasting hours looking. you can either save yourself a fiver or use 3 hours and make yourself a few hundred. point taken.

dmg24

budgetflyer wrote: »

By package rate, I suspect they mean a "prepaid + no refund" rate which on Last Minute is much less than the "unrestricted"pay on checkout rates also avail on Last Minute + Accor.
If that is what you are comparing, then it really isn't like for like

That was my initial thought, but the rate that the OP quoted from the Accor website was prepaid with no refund.

dmg24

TBeckett100 wrote: »

amazes me. my boss taught me something when he found me trying to save £5 on airport parking - wasting hours looking. you can either save yourself a fiver or use 3 hours and make yourself a few hundred. point taken.

Or you can use three hours to save yourself a few hundred ...

budgetflyer

TBeckett100 wrote: »

amazes me. my boss taught me something when he found me trying to save £5 on airport parking - wasting hours looking. you can either save yourself a fiver or use 3 hours and make yourself a few hundred. point taken.

I can just imagine your boss telling Martin Lewis that. The man has turned "saving a fiver" into a multi million £ business.