Cindy M.

My husband and myself have use booking.com for many years. However, a recent experience made us decided not to use or recommend this hotel booking site again.
I arrived Sea-Tac airport one night in Aug. At 10:00pm. When I arrived at Ramada Inn at Sea-Tac, the front desk said she couldn't find my booking. When I show her my confirmation from booking.com, she told me that I am one of the guests that they had contacted booking.com to message me about the overbooking situation and they will not be able to accommodate me. I then called booking.com to explain my problem, and the representative "D" called the front desk immediately. However, there isn't any room available so she called me back, and told me she will try to re accommodate me at a different location with similar price. After another 20 minutes wait, she called back and told me that the closest hotel she could find is 15 miles away. "D"also explained that booking.com will pay for the price differences between the two hotels, the taxi fare and other expenses incurred by this inconvenience. Well, it was past 11:00pm at night now so I took her words and took a taxi to the other hotel. Ended up this new hotel was 35 miles away! It took the taxi almost an hour to get there in no traffic. When I arrived at the hotel, I asked the front desk if there is a less expensive way to get back to Sea-Tac the next morning so I can meet up with my husband. Since the "D" at booking.com was nice and polite on the phone, I thought I would save them some money by taking a short ride on a taxi to go to the pick up point for a shuttle to the airport. The total cost of the taxi+shuttle was $26.50 (I paid the tips myself), 1/4 of the taxi cost.
When I returned home, I scanned the taxi receipts, the shuttle charge on my credit card bill because it was an online booking, and the hotel invoice and send it to booking.com's customer service according to "D"'s email. At first, the customer service will only refund the first taxi fee so I wrote them again. The second time they sent me an email thanking them for accepting the refund and another email will give me instruction of how to get the money to my credit card. So I wrote them the third time and explain to them the whole story again. They wrote back and added $16.50 (cost of the return shuttle) on the refund. I wrote to them the fourth time and explained and attached the first email from "D" which says they will refund the hotel difference and the $10 taxi fee to connect to the shuttle. No reply after a week except the email to the site for credit card refund and a couple more to tell them my experience. I then sent them the 5th email, directly to their customer service link on their website. It's been two days now and nothing. I was given 14 days from the day that they first offered me the refund for the taxi fare to complete the refund procedure, but I am not willing to accept half of the money that had costed me for my trouble. By the way, I had one 50 lbs luggage, one hand carry and a carrying bag on this trip. Instead the 4 load and unload with the free airport shuttle, I ended up with 10 load and unloads with my belongings.
Booking.com, please give me an explanation of why you are not honoring your words.