Susan H.

We are not clients but so called "Partners"

We signed up less than a week ago as "Partners" with Booking.com, We are a 2 room B & B and we have worked long and hard and take great pride in our establishment. We work very hard to have happy guests.

Within 15 minutes of being told we were now "live" with Booking.com they emailed us 5 bookings - 3 for that night alone.

Whilst we were busy trying to get our heads around their booking calendar and contacting Customer Services to advise we were now overbooked because they wouldn't stop emailing us with bookings, they kept emailing. Apparently if you have a fax machine they send a confirmation fax but we don't have one.

We spent a lot of time contacting other places to accommodate these "overbookings" and sent a 5 day booking back to them to deal with as we had unavailable days during that period of time. We have now been advised that not only will they bill us the 15% commission but that we will be liable for any other costs to the client - i. E taxi's etc because we and they were unable to find anything equal to our B & B in our area. Even if we had found somewhere - they still charge us for the commission,!

They also booked 8 people and 2 pets into our B & B despite our website stating we can only take 3 people per room maximum and we do not accept pets. They have advised that we will be invoiced for not being able to honour the booking and sent an email saying we had advertised THREE rooms as available at that time. We don't have 3 rooms (except ours and we definitely don't share that with anyone!).

We have written so many emails and had so many conversations with their "Customer Services" we have lost the will to live.

No one takes responsibility, no one directly answers our concerns about Booking, com's booking practices and we have had enough. We dread seeing another booking emailed through as we don't want to have anything more to do with them so we have now "Fully Booked" their calendar to just get them off our backs whilst we wait yet again for someone to tell us how to terminate our "Partnership" with these sharks.

They take 15% commission and NO responsibility for their agents mistakes.

It is clear that all they care about are their commissions.

We have now lost a lot of money and worked very hard to look after their guests and it has all been for nothing. We will stick with our website and Tripadvisor and AirBnB and our other advertisers from now on.

Ironically the CEO of Priceline/Booking.com is Darren Huston - the same name as mine unfortunately. We will send a formal letter to him but we know it will do no good.

We are at our wits end with their constant emails telling us we will have to reimburse this and pay for that with not one email or phone call to us to discuss our concerns. We are so angry we are looking at going to TV consumer programmes and websites and the EU Trading Standards as we are getting nowhere with this farce of a booking agent.

Even the mighty fall if they upset enough people and after searching the web, we wish we had read the feedback about them before signing up.

The stress they have caused us is horrendous in less than one week.

It is little more than fraud and it's about time people stood up to these behemoths.

They have lost us both as customers who always used them to book and as "Partners". If they lose enough people, maybe they will take note.