Booked late for a conference and am now unable to submit an expense report for my hotel stay because the hotel said Zenhotels would provide receipt and the documentation they provide is no where near sufficient to pass an expense report audit. They refuse to help.
Here's the email chain (start at the bottom):
*******@zenhotels.com
8:10 AM (5 hours ago)
To me
Dear Guest,
Good morning!
We only provide this document.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at any time.
Our support team is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Thank you.
--
Best regards,
Karolina B.
----------------
David please read the email chain. The receipt provided there does not provide the adequate information I need in order to get reimbursed by my company for my travel expenses.
On Thu, Sep 22,2022, 10:49 PM <*******@zenhotels.com> wrote:
Dear Amanda,
Thank you for choosing Zenhotels.com!
You can download the invoice from your personal account on our website. If you're not logged in, please log in with your email and password, then go to "My bookings" page. Find the booking and press "Read more" or, if it's a past booking, click on the name of the hotel. You will be redirected to your booking voucher. Click "Print Invoice" and you're all set!
Please do not hesitate to contact us for any further assistance you may need.
--
--
Best regards,
David E.
Operations & Customer Service Team
Tel.:+357 25 *******
With the utmost respect, I booked a hotel through your business for a business trip and am confused as to why obtaining a receipt for the cost of the trip in a format that is compliant with expense reporting in the US is an issue. The hotel said they do not have any information because I booked through you and are therefore unable to provide a receipt. Are you unable to provide a standard receipt for a hotel booking so that I can be reimbursed for my costs by my company?
I do not understand why a tax advisor would be consulted when all I need is a receipt to complete an expense report so I can have my expenses reimbursed by my company. This is becoming a bit absurd.
Thank you
Amanda
On Thu, Sep 22,2022, 4:05 PM <*******@zenhotels.com> wrote:
Dear Amanda,
Thank you for choosing Zenhotels.com.
In response to your query, and having consulted with our tax advisors, please be advised that we are not obligated to issue VAT invoices.
Leaside Services is not selling actual accommodation services, but rather acting as a booking facilitator who provides access to informational hotel database with an option to make a booking and pay for it. The booking service is offered free of charge to the customer. The booking price received by Leaside Services is transferred in full to third-party providers of hotel inventory.
Therefore, Leaside Services is not selling any accommodation services and is not providing any paid services to the customers, and hence is not required to issue any VAT invoices.
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us anytime.
--
--
Best regards,
David E.
Operations & Customer Service Team
Tel.:+357 25 *******
Hi Alla - the receipt available does not provide an adequate amount of information for me to submit with my expense report. I need the date of check in, date of check out, and the charges broken down into daily amounts for the room and any taxes separately. Please provide a detailed receipt.
Thank you
Amanda
On Thu, Sep 22,2022 at 12:48 PM <*******@zenhotels.com> wrote:
Dear Amanda,
Thank you for choosing Zenhotels.com!
You can download the invoice from your personal account on our website. If you're not logged in, please log in with your email and password, then go to "My bookings" page. Find the booking and press "Read more" or, if it's a past booking, click on the name of the hotel. You will be redirected to your booking voucher. Click "Print Invoice" and you're all set!
Please do not hesitate to contact us for any further assistance you may need.
--
Best regards,
Alla B.
Customer support specialist
I booked a hotel through your website and have not received a receipt.
Thanks
Amanda
We booked a hotel via zentel, and I never experienced any problems
Very good hospitality and good response, value for money, good cleaning, sanati
I am writing to express my sincere disappointment with my first (and will be only) experience with Zen Hotels. Due to the Corona Virus and being a frontline healthcare worker, my employer suspended travel outside the state.
Knowing I booked my reservation with a "no refund policy", I called the hotel I was staying at and expressed my concern and request to cancel the reservation. Calling Zen Hotel, they informed they were only canceling reservations in certain countries due to the corona virus, with the US not being one. I spoke with a representative, Danil, who requested I call the hotel with my request and if they agreed, they would refund my reservation.
After calling the hotel, they were more that willing to comply with my cancellation request due to the outbreak in public health concern. They kindly requested I call ZenHotel and have them call the directly, they stated they are unable to send an email with this confirmation information, as it was booked through a third party.
After calling Danil back, he stated he was unwilling to call the hotel and would send them an email to work on it and that I would be copied in the email. After not receiving an email, I called back support and spoke with Daniel again. He said the email was sent and would follow up with the results. After voicing my concern that the hotel requested a direct call, he refused. I requested to speak with a manager, this request was refused because his manager "was away". After asking a second time to speak with a manager, he said "they are on the phone with the hotel currently". I requested again to have Danil call the hotel directly as requested by hotel staff, again receiving a refusal. Throughout the conversation, the representative was rude and unwilling to act on behalf of the customer. After calling the hotel again, they again said they need to speak with ZenHotel directly.
By choosing ZenHotel, it should be expected that the company preforms the customer service rather than the customer. This representative's unwillingness to remedy the situation and formidable demeanor was very negative and I will never seek out using ZenHotel in the future.
This outbreak is a very concerning public health issue and I'm concerned this company is not willing to act on the behalf of the customer. Since the hotel was approving of the cancellation, I'm concerned about the integrity of this company. From this experience, I would avoid this company at all costs.
ZenHotels booked the wrong hotel!
Tl; dr: Zenhotels booked an unknown boutique hotel instead of the original one included in my reservation and refused to correct the situation with the original hotel. Don't trust google or a fancy looking website, this a small company is based out of Cyprus.
Longer Story:
I had a terrible experience with this company. My wife and I had originally booked a hotel in downtown Madrid (Hotel Preciados Preciados Street, 37) as part of an anniversary vacation with my wife. After a long flight from the US, we arrived early in the morning to drop off our bags and do an early check in if they had availability. After handing the associated paperwork and confirmation number, the Hotel could not locate my reservation. The hotel staff were kind enough to try and contact ZenHotels to try to resolve the matter. But after several minutes, they were still on the phone with ZenHotels and were finally told that ZenHotels would have to work with Expedia to resolve the issue and told us they would call back "shortly". Keep in mind, we had just traveled several hours to a different country and were without cell service waiting in the lobby with our bags and were dependent on ZenHotels to call the hotel back at an unspecified time. We continued to wait in the small hotel lobby for a phone call that came nearly an hour later.
A representative named, Gilyana Titarenko called me back and told me ZenHotels had made a mistake and booked a smaller boutique hotel across the street (The First One Boutique Hotel at Calle de Preciados, 44) and have arranged that we can stay at the mistakenly booked place instead of our original hotel. I was willing to consider the compromise, but I needed to review the new hotel to determine if it would be satisfactory. We had very little time to make this decision and weren't in a great position waiting in a hotel lobby borrowing Wifi. Sadly, after looking at the reviews online, there were only 9 reviews on google total vs. the nearly 800 positive reviews that we had researched for Hotel Preciados well ahead of time. ZenHotels tried to convince us that they were basically the same hotel, but they clearly had different reviews. After telling Gilyana that we were not going to consider the new hotel, they responded back with offer to upgrade free-of-charge, but even at that point, my confidence in this company handling the hotel arrangements were too low for me to continue.
In order to rectify the situation, I had requested if we could book the original hotel and for them to honor the original price that we had reserved. We had checked with the Hotel Preciados staff and there was availability and the price difference was less than 50 euros. I was told this was not possible and asked to speak with a ZenHotels manager and was told by Gilyana that managers do not typically speak directly with customers and that I would have to write a letter. What? In what world would that be a viable option?
I've run into situations like these before with sites like Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, and when they have messed up this badly, they're typically very accomodating to "make it right." Not this time.
At the end of hours trying to resolve my issue, I gave up and just requested a full refund. But, even that was hard to get as I was originally told it wouldn't be possible. But after threats to contact my credit card company they finally stated that they'd give me a full refund.
I still have not received a refund yet (was told it would be between 3-30 days?), but after requesting in writing the guarantee for a refund I received the following note:
We are pleased to inform that we have managed to cancel your booking #XXXXXX successfully free of charge. You will receive a full refund of your payment within 3 - 30 working days depending on your bank to the same card that you used for payment.
For any other assistance, do not hesitate to contact us.
Really hoping that the refund comes through soon, or I will be contacting my credit card company.
All
Perfect.
Booked a double room in London for a very attractive price, all seemed good and the hotel confirmed the booking. A month later we got our money back on our creditcard without any notice, not from the hotel and not from ZenHotels. If we had not seen this, we would probably have arrived in London to find out at the hotel that the booking was cancelled without notifying us. Luckily, because we sent an email to the hotel, we found out that the booking was cancelled. They told us that the price was not correct. We tried to figure things out, but the hotel sent us to ZenHotels. We called the support center, but two calls (with very bad service) did not help much. We then decided to send an email. It looked like they were going to fix things, but we did not hear anything anymore. Only after emailing and asking ourselves we got the message that they were working on it. This gave us the confidence that it would be fixed and that's also why we did not book other accommodation ourselves. Finally, two weeks later we get an email that our booking with the hotel is indeed cancelled (which we already knew) and options for alternative accommodations that are way more expensive than our initial booking. The reason ZenHotels gave for the cancellation, overbooking, is also not the same as the hotel gave us - that ZenHotels let us book for a wrong price -. We checked online and the hotel was not overbooked at all since rooms were still available. To us this appeared as if ZenHotels is not willing to acknowledge their mistake and make up for it. They advertise with nice prices that are not true, leaving customers without accommodation. It's only because we found out and contacted ZenHotels that they have looked for alternative accommodation for us. And then we get offers that are more than double the price we initially booked for. Moreover, after looking at those offers, we found out that we could book exactly the same rooms for lower prices ourselves. All of this led us to decide to book our own accommodation. ZenHotels asked for the payment invoice of this accommodation, to look at a refund/compensation. We emailed the invoice right after our stay in London to ZenHotels (June 14), but since then heard nothing anymore! They said they send it to their complaints department, but it's totally silent. Two emails from our side asking about the status of things are totally ignored.
So here we are, many calls, emails and frustrations later. We lost money because the amount we paid for the hotel was not exactly the same as the amount that got transferred back. Furthermore, the costs of our accommodation were now way higher than the price we initially booked for on ZenHotels.com. Between our initial booking on ZenHotels.com and booking ourselves, and even between our first contact with ZenHotels support about this issue and booking ourselves, the prices of hotel rooms have gone up a lot and many good accommodations got fully booked. ZenHotels service was very disappointing, and now they even ignore us. All in all, things would have gone way better if we had not booked through ZenHotels.com. A lot of energy, money and frustration would have been saved.
Not good not good not good...
On a quick break to see the rugby
League in Perpignan booked the Hotel Reding Croma though Zen in Barcelona could not fault the service or hotel.