Terry P.

I booked a hotel a few days ago in boracay on a nonrefundable deal. Literally within minutes i was forced to cancel due to a death in the family back in the uk. I'm currently living in south east Asia. I notified agoda immediately and because of the deal I had booked i offered to leave the money on account if they could cancel my booking with the hotel Fir that period. I doubted they had even contacted them! However, the response was that I would need to provide a copy of the death certificate, and it was up to the hotel to make the decision. Boracay in may is not a difficult place to re-let rooms. In view of the fact that I have been a regular agoda user i was quite disappointed with their initial response. There was no message of condolences just an exclamation mark after the need for a death certificate, something I found very rude. I wrote again explaining where i was in the world, the travel arrangements i had to make, sorting out my work commitments and my family etc and they were more bothered about a death certificate! After some more tooing and froing they eventually told me the hotel had given a full refund to my credit card however this was only after I told them to stick their company and that I would never use them again and I would flood social media with comments about their uncaring attitude to my situation. The fact that I wasn't asking for a refund merely a delay on the booking being my major point. However, the money has not been refunded to my account yet, it may take up to 4 weeks apparently, something else I find odd, it's taken in seconds but takes 28 days to refund?
Watch this space for news on the refund. It seems to me that they need to take each case for negotiating a refund on a non-refundable booking on a case by case basis. Had I just accepted their original company line i would have lost over 300 pounds.