Booking.comReviews 4,272

I am extremely disappointed with our (incl. Thozama Mxenge) experience at this accommodation. The listing was misleading, as it failed to disclose that the property is a student accommodation. On the way to the unit, the building itself was in terrible condition—dirty white walls, loud students, and balconies cluttered with hanging clothing and even mattresses.

Upon arrival at the unit, I was appalled by its state. It was poorly maintained, with dirty and worn-out couches, cracked tiles, and stained, yellowing bedding. The plumbing was in terrible condition, with loose taps, while the surfaces were sticky and appeared never to have been deep cleaned. The showers had visible dirt and grime in the corners and between the tiles.
Due to these unacceptable conditions, we decided not to check in. The platform initially promised to refund our booking fee of R10 413.68, yet despite their assurances, we have not received our money back. Repeated attempts to contact them and their service provider have led nowhere, with no resolution or reimbursement.

Their failure to honor their promise, along with their lack of proper vetting of this property, has prompted me to consider filing a complaint under the Consumer Protection Act of South Africa. I hold them accountable for allowing this property to operate on their platform and for facilitating the loss of our money.

The lack of transparency, poor service, and refusal to issue a refund have left a lasting negative impression. I strongly advise against booking this accommodation or using this booking.com.

The company needs to follow up on negative reviews and vett properties offered.

I had the most terrible experience with Booking.com, and I feel obligated to warn others. I had a confirmed reservation for an apartment, with check-in scheduled for 4:00 PM. When I arrived, the host was completely unresponsive. Only at 6:00 PM—after hours of frustration—did the host finally answer, just to inform me that he had canceled my reservation a week after I booked it, and Booking.com never bothered to notify me!

At 6:00 PM, exhausted and stranded with my luggage, I had to scramble to find another hotel, which ended up costing me 1,000 ILS more than my original booking. This was not just an inconvenience—it was a complete disaster!

And what did Booking.com do? Absolutely nothing. They responded once with a generic apology, saying they would "look into it," and then vanished. No follow-up, no compensation, no accountability. Their customer service is a joke, and they clearly do not care about their customers.

This experience was beyond unacceptable. I will never use Booking.com again, and I strongly urge others to be cautious. If something goes wrong with your booking, don't expect any real support from them!

I travel for 3 to 6 months a year and I have been a Genius (Level 3) since 2012 so I am not a flyby reviewer. Last year however when traveling in the south of France, I had a horrible experience with a hotel. There were cigarette burns on the furniture and curtains, a large pile of hair on the window seal, and a hole in the bathroom which when you shine a light in it, showed an empty room (seriously, WTF?). I left the hotel and booked another room for my stay with booking.com.

I contacted management there and with Booking.com with pictures documenting everything and received no response. When I finally heard back from Booking.com, I was told that they would reach out to hotel but when they received no response, I was told that I would not receive a refund.

I am a genius level 3 meaning that I have booked dozens if not hundreds of nights with booking.com so when I do this much business with a company, I at least expect them to be an advocate on my behalf. I expected a full refund as I gave proof of my experience and they could see I had to book another hotel.

That was August of 2024. As of today, I have booked my rooms with other sites, even when it is more expensive, and have not used Booking.com since.

They do make sure what is being advertised by the accomodations is accurate. The accomodation said it also had single beds but was only a matress on the floor. They do not make sure that the accomodations are following their own country rules...i.e.we were charged an additional 19% vat tax by the property in colombia and then we find out we did not to pay that since we are tourists. They should be more awhere on what there customers are doing.

Booked this hotel through booking.com, even made the payment.
When we went to the property on our booking date, they refused to give us a room and said they are not affiliated with booking.com. We showed them our confirmation details and payment proofs yet they did not honour our booking. This was at 8pm in the evening! We did not have any choice but to take our luggage and go from hotel to hotel asking if there was any availability anywhere. Please note we had come to India for an event that was to be attended by 50 thousand people, hence all hotels were fully booked! We finally managed to find a room at a hotel which was further to our desired location but we had no choice. We were shattered and tired from the travelling and stress of the ordeal!

We have been trying to contact booking.com since October 2024 asking for a refund of the original amount paid and a compensation for all the trouble we had to go through. Booking.com has been the least helpful, I have spent hours on end speaking to their customer service and emailing them, have given them proofs of original booking, payment made, invoice from new hotel, bank statements everything. Booking.com has confirmed on numerous occasions that they have all the evidence and they will process a refund, but yet to date we have not received anything! Further to that I am unable to access my booking.com wallet, and when I asked their customer service they said they are unable to help!

The worst thing is this property is still showing on booking.com's database, which adds on to the fact they do not care about customer service or upholding their contracts, but are only interested in commissions! Please stay away!

Booking.FAIL House we had a confirmation for in Fort Lauderdale was sold and no one bothered to tell us. Customer service offered to find our party mother place to stay only the places they offered were not in the same state or even country as our original reservation. Now there is noting suitable available and they stopped replying to my messages.

Never Trust Booking.com – They Can Cancel Your Booking Anytime!

I booked a hotel 20 days in advance and made full payment through Booking.com. When I arrived at the hotel with my family, I was shocked to learn at the reception that my booking had been canceled.

The hotel staff informed me that the cancellation came directly from Booking.com. When I contacted Booking.com's customer service, all they could say was, "Sorry, we can't do anything. We will refund your payment."

This left my family and me stranded. It took over five stressful hours of searching to finally find alternative accommodation.

This experience was incredibly disappointing, and I cannot recommend Booking.com after this ordeal. If you're planning a trip, think twice before relying on their platform – your booking might not be as secure as you think!

This fall, I started a reservation on Booking.com but ended up choosing another option on a different site. Since I never confirmed the first reservation, it didn't appear in my profile, so I assumed everything was fine. However, Booking.com confirmed the reservation with the hotel and charged my credit card. Despite numerous attempts to contact them, they keep asking for a reservation number, which I never received due to the lack of confirmation. Their customer service is non-existent, and I strongly advise against using their services. Book directly with the establishments to avoid this kind of issue.

They have the worst client service. They do not help at all. We had scammers who lied about an apartment we booked, when we were there it was not safe and basically nothing was ok about the apartment. I called booking and cancelled the apartment. I demanded my money back but booking do not want to help and each time I call the line cuts off and I get someone else. In one day I told my story 8 times from scratch and spent 2 hours on the phone, my day was ruined. Shame on booking not punishing scammers and give them free pass, as long as booking get their percentage they do not care. For me after being a client for more than a decade I will never use booking again and won't recommend it to anyone. We lost now 940€!

I had booked what I thought was a refundable ticket for a trip that was 62 days from the arrival date, buried in the fine print was the fact that I can to cancel 60 days before the arrival date. I suspected that there was going to be a massive layoff which is why I wanted a refundable rate. Well, yes, I was laid off and canceled by trip 45 days prior to arrival!

Nope - Booking.com would NOT refund me. They instructed me to go to Coventry Motor Inn which is the hotel I booked my stay at. I've sent 2 email messages explaining the circumstances and CRICKETS! I'll be posting a review for Coventry Motor Inn as well.

I booked a hotel and flight on this site and had to cancel 2 days later because of a work situation. I called to cancel (30 days before trip was supposed to happen) and i was told that i was getting 65% of what the price was back. I was told that is because of the airlines rules not booking.com. When i explained that i booked it on booking.com and not the airline site and therefor should be compensated the full refund i got nothing but a runaround. Now i paid extra in the beginning in case i had to cancel and when i paid that extra it stated on their website that the cancellation was "Free" paying 35% of the ticket price is in no way "free" on top of all of that i was told that even though they took my money for the booking within minutes of me making the reservation that i would have to wait 2 weeks to get a refund. I am sure in some very fine print somewhere on their website it explains all of this but nothing in the way of it in bold letters like the "free" cancellation and so on. In the future i will look up the flights and hotels on this site and then call them directly, as i would never use or recommenced booking.com to anyone ever again.Been almost 2 weeks and still no refund

I have been using Booking.com for many years without any issues, but when a real problem arose, their processes proved impossible to resolve.

I booked a hostel in Athens, and since my flight arrived at night, I mentioned this twice in my communication with the hostel. However, they only replied with generic, templated messages. Since the property description stated they had a "24-hour front desk," I didn't anticipate any problems. Unfortunately, when I arrived, no one answered the door, and no one picked up the phone.

I immediately contacted Booking.com support. The support manager also tried to reach the property but couldn't. We agreed that I would check into another hotel to avoid spending the night on the street, and Booking.com assured me they would compensate me for the price difference upon reviewing my invoice and the situation.

What followed was three months of back-and-forth emails and phone calls with Booking.com support. They said they needed confirmation from the property that I hadn't stayed there, but the property ignored their emails. During this time, I came across similar reviews: other travelers had also arrived at night, found no one to let them in, and had to find alternative accommodations. It seems the recipe for some properties is simple: provide false information, take the money, ignore complaints, and vanish — while Booking.com does nothing.

Eventually, I noticed the property was no longer listed on Booking.com. I contacted support again, only to hear the same apology: "We can do very little after the booking date; we are very sorry." But wasn't I promised a resolution by your manager?

At this point, I've lost faith in Booking.com's ability to address such issues. That's why I'm making my story public.

Tried using booking.com for the first time and they say free cancellation NOT! Booked Oct 30,2024 and tried to cancel and change an all inclusive vacation and they still charged me $500 …. NEVER book with them!🤬😡

Harsh refund penalty, Booking.com shouldn't have such policies, to pay over 900 Euro as a mistake is terrible, they should allow partial refunds. Customer service is non existence, no one replies to your messages or emails.

I was charged double the price I signed for, and there was no customer service, no response, no nothing. Please never consider them.

I do not recommend Booking.com. This summer, while traveling with my two sons in Italy, our reservation in Naples was canceled by the property owner just 2 hours before our arrival. Despite their advertisements promising 24/7 support, Booking.com turned out to be completely unreachable: I spent an hour listening to a recorded message saying their service was overloaded.

In an emergency situation in an unsafe area of central Naples, I tried to make last-minute bookings for two consecutive accommodations through their platform. Booking.com immediately charged both amounts, but neither of the property owners showed up to hand over the keys. After two hours of searching on-site, we were forced to stay at a hotel in central Naples with questionable clientele, for an exorbitant price of 450 euros for one night.

Since returning, I have made over 20 calls to Booking.com's so-called "support service," which appears to be outsourced and ineffective. No refunds, no acknowledgment of the platform's failures. Worse still, some fraudulent listings remain active: one of the addresses led us to a dangerous area (with drug traffickers in the streets), where even the police advised us to leave quickly for our safety.

In summary: Booking.com neither protects its clients nor ensures their safety and takes no responsibility for serious issues. Avoid at all costs if you value peace of mind and safety while traveling.

Was frauded by an accomodation listed on booking.com. Paid in June in full, booking was for October arrived in Athens, accomodation never answered our calls and messages. We were promised an immediate refund by booking.com, which to date almost a month after, no refunds were made. No call backs were made. No one replies to messages. Waiting time to for booking.com to check your details is 28mins and then they hang up. No accountability, no clarity. Something is up to no good with booking.com

I had someone else log into my account and make a booking using my rewards points. I use 2FA and they could still get in! No alerts, no upcoming trip notifications, nothing.

I can't close my account because of a "technical error" and booking.com refuse to close my account.

Pitiful.

Booking.com double booked us so we were not able to stay at property and had to find somewhere else to stay with our 5 kids late at night and despite spending hours on the phone, they have not returned our money even though it's been almost a year and they said they would. DONT USE THEM!