Nan Z.

Today I had an unsatisfactory dealing with FlightHub. I am a Canadian, booking from Canada on a Canadian airline from one Canadian city to another Canadian city and would expect to be dealing in Canadian funds. Let me be clear: I am NOT UNHAPPY about the price of the flight. Rather, this is a general complaint about websites, FlightHub included, that are not transparent enough about the currency in which their prices are quoted. While some have an option to switch from US to Canadian currency, the choice is not given to you in an obvious way. For example, FlightHub (flighthub.com) has a little US flag in the top right hand corner of its site, but it is small and easily missed. Others have some notification in the 'terms and conditions' or in similarly obscure locations or in very small print (reservations.com). Other sites have no indication. (profusionshops.com) - I had to email them to ask. Again, I'm not upset by the price I received from FlightHub. I just want to know what currency I'm dealing with because I have both a USD credit card and a CD card and would like to use the one that relates to the currency being charged so that I am not paying a transaction fee to the banks. Today, I called FlightHub within minutes of the transaction being completed to see if I could change the card - possible only if I cancelled the reservation, which would trigger a penalty. In this day of global companies and digital communications, I would ask that companies give their customers clarity with regard to the currency being displayed.

Update: After being contacted by the Better Business Bureau, reservations.com refunded my money in full. While I do appreciate this, reservations.com continues to use misleading web addresses.

Original review: My husband and I wish to stay in the Best Western Hotel in Boulder Colorado in early March. After looking at some online reservation websites, I decided to go through the hotel website directly to reserve, as I have a gift card. I googled Best Western Boulder Colorado and made the reservation. Having done so, I was astonished to find, not only had I booked through reservations.com (the website address came up as BestWesternBoulder.reservations.com), I am unable to cancel the reservation. I have made many reservations through other online websites and have never been unable to cancel a reservation of any kind.

I immediately called customer service at reservations.com. When I spoke with the customer service representative, I was told cancellations were not allowed because that was the policy of the hotel. However, when I spoke with the manager at Best Western, Boulder Colorado, I was told the policy was reservation.com's. I was also told this problem was beginning to occur frequently - that reservations.com were seemingly 'tricking' online customers. I suggested to the manager that Best Western might want to review its relationship with reservations.com and perhaps refuse to accept bookings through them.

I did go back to look at the site that I had booked on and did find a link to their cancellation policy. However, such a policy should be more apparent - perhaps a pop-up warning before the final acceptance by the user.

I should also point out that when my credit card company tried to call them to attempt to negotiate something, their call was blocked with a message saying they could not connect 'from your region'. And when I tried to place a third-party call to reservations.com in order to include my credit card representative, I was immediately disconnected. It seems clear to me that reservations.com understands that its policies are questionable and that they do not wish to deal with complaints.