Bianca I.

Checked the news headlines today and there's six different stories about bikinis/other risque clothing where there should be news headlines. And while Yahoo provide you with an option to provide feedback, they don't, unfortunately, provide you with an option to submit that feedback. All that was achieved was getting frustrated and having to look elsewhere to find actual news. My score is zero out of infinite.

Absolute worst case scenario: I booked my hostel three weeks before I arrived, received my booking confirmation and reference number, then arrived at 3am to find my booking had NOT been made, the customer service number they provide is not connected and nobody responded to my 20 odd emails demanding urgent assistance (as per their 24/7 customer service guarantee). I had to contact crisis care to put me up in emergency accommodation as everything else in town was booked due to the same event I had travelled there for. Two days later (when I returned home) I found a couple of emails saying "yo what's the problem?" like I hadn't clearly explained it in 20 separate emails. They are now giving me the run around with further insulting responses like "we can see your booking, was there a problem?" I've never ended up in such a helpless situation and it was all because of this company a) not booking my hostel and b) not responding to my customer care enquiry. They did NOTHING. The Salvation Army paid an $80 cab fare to put me up for 2 nights in a motel 2 hours out of town. My weekend was completely ruined. Still no closer to getting in contact without someone at Hostelworld besides generic email responses. Unreal. NEVER again. I've used this overseas and I'm terrified now that this could have happened where I didn't even speak the language or know which local homeless charities existed. Like you should need to. Wow. Mind blown.

I purchased a t-shirt. Super simple stuff. The website advised an email would be sent to confirm my order. Naively, I believed this might automatically happen. It didn't. I assumed I hadn't placed the order so went back online and ordered the same shirt again. This time I waited for the confirmation email. It didn't arrive again. I checked my bank. There are now two withdrawals for two t-shirts (neither receipted by email or able to be searched for and located under my account details) and I've waited over 48 hours (not on a weekend) for a response and have not received one. Now I will have to go to my bank and get the payment reversed. Definitely not worth the drama; I just wanted a new shirt, not another problem to follow up. The fact they have not even bothered responding is reflected in my rating.

So I tried the "one week free trial" and after 5 days I tried to cancel my account so that I wouldn't start getting billed. There was no option to do this on the website, so I contacted them through the website to request confirmation that my subscription had ended, which went unanswered. Six months later when I changed my bank card, I received an email saying "we were unable to bill you this month" from them and realised they had been billing me $15 per month for the past 6 months so I asked them to refund me. They said if I could provide any email evidence of my attempt to cancel my account they would do this, so I found a six month old email to their customer service team which clearly spelled out that I wanted my account cancelled before any costs were incurred and sent that back to them, but then they replied to say it didn't matter, they were unable to provide a refund regardless. I'm not sure how I ended up in a battle for my own money after somebody stole it out of my bank account.