Problems with Booking.com refund

[Chicken_Satay]

At the end of September, I had a booking with Booking.com. The property I stayed with promised me a 20% refund of the value of the first night due to a problem with the room. They told me it had been sent to the booking agent. Booking.com keep telling me to contact the property. The result is, we're going round in circles.

I noticed on my booking email that it stated that it was a "Partner offer - Your booking is with Bedsonline". Could the refund have been issued to Bedsonline and that's why I haven't received it?

According to the Bedsonline website, they are: "...the leading booking engine for travel agents". My credit card statement lists "Tpi By Booking.com Amsterdam Nld". As far as I'm aware, that means "third party intermediary", which I'm guessing is Bedsonline. However, I don't have a customer relationship with Bedsonline, only with Booking.com The clowns at Booking.com repeatedly say they can't help me.

Has anybody had this issue before, and if so, how was it resolved? I'm thinking it may be easiest just to request the refund via my credit card provider.

[Imasurv]

This is the main reason I will no longer deal with booking agents/online booking sites etc. you do simply end up going round in circles and they really couldn’t care less about you. It takes 5 mins to book something, but months to get a refund, even when they cancel the booking!

No help in your situation, but maybe you are right that the only option is a claim back through your credit card/bank.

[ConnectionError]

I have a feeling the hotel may have tried to fob you off.

I cannot recall (I haven't used booking.com as a hotelier for a couple of years) there being a partial refund facility available.

The hotel should have dealt with it

[KAgantua]

booking wont care

[Auslander]

KAgantua said:

booking wont care

I've found them to be really good - they got me a refund on a B&B that I'd paid for in advance.

It was advertised as a 'luxury boutique B&B' and turned out to be a guest house on a council estate.

I called them from the premises, told them I was leaving, and expected a full refund. All sorted, and an alternative hotel booked, within 10-15 minutes.

[VTECMatt]

When you pay online, we would claim the money on a virtual card, so never have your card details. In order to refund the card you paid on would involve refunding the card at the time.

Imho It’s down to the hotel/b&b in general unless they don’t have way of processing it, which is possible if a very small operation.

The process if the property hasn’t dealt with it is raise the complaint, booking.com will contact property to agree amount to the refund, booking.come process it. How ever if they don’t agree then it will be down to booking.com to make a decision whether to refund you and take the hit.

It helps going direct, most businesses like us pay 17% commission so willing to negotiate a bit to offset.

[VTECMatt]

Also Booking.com are starting to use other agents which they then sell rooms on their behalf, it’s a complete st show and have so many issues as they quite often are misspelling what we offer and the room types.

[Chicken_Satay]

VTECMatt said:

The process if the property hasn’t dealt with it is raise the complaint, booking.com will contact property to agree amount to the refund, booking.come process it. How ever if they don’t agree then it will be down to booking.com to make a decision whether to refund you and take the hit.

The property has agreed the refund, the intermediary is fine with it (based on the correspondence I saw this morning). The difficulty is that Booking.com customer support don't know how to deal with this issue to resolve it. I was supplied an email address last night for their customer support team so I will forward the chain to them and if it becomes an issue, I'll just raise it with the credit card company.