Early in 2020 I booked a room through HotelPlanner for late April. I'm the cautious type, so I made sure I was getting a reservation with free cancellation up to one day ahead of the reservation, and even paid a little extra for that. Of course I had to cancel the trip because of Covid-19. I went to Hotelplanner.com to cancel the hotel room, and found out the hotel had already closed down and cancelled all reservations for the near future. So I expected the refund to be processed more or less automatically, but to be sure I filed an inquiry on the Hotelplanner site. I never received any update on the inquiry, my messages weren't returned, and the refund never came. So I filed a dispute through my credit card, thinking it was a cut-and-dried matter since I could show the free cancellation policy on my booking confirmation. Well, Hotelplanner has refused to give me the refund, saying my reservation was non-refundable (in spite of obvious evidence) and condescendingly haranguing me about my responsibility to know what I was signing, blah blah. In fact, they used by booking confirmation as supposed evidence of their position! Well, I found out that when Hotelplanner sent my bank their decision the confirmation they attached had been falsified, with new text added saying the reservation was non-refundable. That's outright fraud, and I'll probably get my refund by showing them I know what they did. If you think somehow this was just an isolated misunderstanding, look up the company on the Better Business Bureau website and you'll see lots more complaints like mine. They're not only recent ones that might be attributed to covid chaos and financial hardship; they go back to well before the pandemic. You've been warned. Stay away from Hotelplanner.com.
Greetings,
Thank you for contacting us. for this mutual clients reservation they did dispute the charge and once a charge is in dispute the refund mechanism is removed from us being able to process a refund for their reservation until the dispute is closed and or resolved in the merchants favor. We did reach out to the guest and did retrieve their bank dispute letter and as such we have now been able to processs a refund for their booking. A refund in the amount of ((($430.86)) has been processed back to the clients account and they can expect the funds to be allocated in their account in 3 to 7 business days.
Regards,
HotelPlanner