Bharat B.

I had a very bad experience with LastMinute and have all email evidence on this. I want to let you all know so you avoid LastMinute as well as if someone can connect me to leading newspaper/travel magazine to get my experience published.

My saga with Lastminute is briefed below and I have email trail and bank statement to verify its correctness:

Here is what happened:

I had booked Hyatt Regency Creek (Dubai) in Sep 2019 for my stay from Xmas to New Year. I had paid full amount to Lastminute.com in September itself.

On Dec 25, when I reached hotel and tried to checked in, they could not find my booking.

Contacting Lastminute from abroad (Dubai to UK) was itself challenge as Hotel wouldn't allow me to make international call and my SIM balance quickly got finished. Eventually, hotel realized my plight and allowed me to call.

Lastminute then checked and found that hotel had rejected my booking but lastminute could not update booking status to CANCELLED nor they could communicate me.

LastMinute told me that the hotel wants me to stay one more night and pay for Gala Dinner which I declined as my flights were already booked so there was no point in extending my hotel booking. And since LastMinute accepted my booking n payment so they should had, if Hotel had any additional conditions which was not conveyed at time of booking/paying.

Finally, in the evening Lastminute got me another hotel Marriott but for some reason the new hotel did not receive payment from LastMinute (after 6 weeks of holiday, I realize that this was intentional from LastMinute as due to late notice booking, the hotel was going to cost them 2672 GBP - almost 2.5 times I paid to them).

On Dec 25 (on the night of checkin), last minute rep told me that their provider has confirmed payment has been sorted out.

But on Dec 31, when I checked out, hotel staff told me that they did not receive any payment (Some mistake was also from Marriott Hotel as they should had conveyed me in 1-2 days that my payment has not been made).

Lastminute was conveyed about this at 845am Dec 31 (GMT zero time) and was reminded through out the day. In the evening at 530pm Dec 31 (GMT 0), when I went to hotel to collect my luggage and catch my flight, LastMinute had not resolved the payment issue and I ended up paying 2672 GBP to Mariott Hotel.

When I contacted LastMinute, to pay compensation for stress caused by them and the payment of 2672 GBP I did tor Marriott Hotel, they took one month and told me that they can offer me 500 GBP.

In short, I paid 1100 for my hotel booking several months and then had to pay 2672 GBP to Marriott as LastMinute moved me to Marriott and they just want to pay me 500 GBP and settle this. I was shocked n surprised and was wondering what kind of company is this and how they can justify this.

After putting reviews on few sites, they have contacted me back but its been 2 week since my first review and I am still awaiting

It is practically a fraud company - problems are:

1) On Shared hosting, control panel, database server - all was very slow and practically useless

So I decided to cancel hosting and get my money back as they have 30 day money back guarantee and this was my experience:

1) No visible option to cancel hosting so I raised support ticket
2) They responded with what is the problem and that until they get respond they will not cancel
3) I explained the problem and requested that I don't want waste further time and want to cancel (in 4 days of hosting)
4) Then they replied the process on how to delete (they could have done it themself)
5) I followed the process - and then I am given a message that I have to contact SUPPORT on CHAT to complete the deletion
6) Late night CHAT not available so I had to remember to contact them in next morning.
7) And the story is not over yet - sales chat asked me to login and contact another chat.
Then Support chat, told me to hit DELETE button and then I will get chat button and there I should chat.
I told them, as I already requested DELETE, I do not see this delete button.
8) It was all wierd - finally found 3rd chat windows
9) In this chat, person is demanding reasons on why I am leaving and when I conveyed wasted time and have performance problems, he is demanding show me support ticket
10) After deleting my hosting, now next step is that I have to login again and start WITHDRAW MONEY process - no auto credit. Probably because Indian company so not advanced.

These are just ways to make sure you forget to delete within 30 days (making the process require so much of interaction) so they can keep your money (besides providing such a poor service)

And also that you find it is so much of time wasting that you feel like forget the money and move on.