Reccomend hotel Bangkok urgent

[Jun]

I wonder how many times you have received refunds or additional perks after writing such a review.

Zero, since I have never had a need to go to that stage.
The last time a hotel tried to add charges was in Europe & it was resolved in my favour at the front desk.

I see the sequence of events as:
1 Discuss with front desk
2 Discuss with the management, politely, then assertively. Threaten to write reviews if necessary.
3 Discuss with the booking site
4 Write reviews. This is more done for the good of society than my personal benefit. However hotel bookings ARE affected by review scores & if everyone who is ambushed with extra charges writes a scathing review, customers can see it and hotels will have to stop the scams. It's all about allowing others to make informed choices and pressurizing the hotels to behave. Then what goes round comes round.

Most booking websites have a box for all the key rules & I just expect hotels to declare all material charges in that location.

Saying the room is 2000 baht (for example) & then finding it is nearly 2900 baht when you arrive is just dishonest.

I expect all transactions to be fair to both parties and once it becomes unfair, I challenge them.

[Undaunted]

..

[a447]

A few years ago I wrote a scathing review of a hotel I stayed at in Hoian, Vietnam. It was one of many such reviews, which I foolishly ignored. I reserved a room via Booking.com, if I recall.

I sent the same review to the booking site but it refused to post it.

The scam works as follows :

On arrival at the hotel you are told the room you booked is not available at present, but they have another hotel you can stay at. When I asked what the problem was, I was told recent flooding meant the room was out of service.

I asked how this was possible, since the room was on the third floor. They changed their story and said there was an electrical problem.

So I was bundled off to the other hotel, which was a total dump, despite my being assured it was of a higher class - no hot water, no electricity, filthy sheets, etc.

I was returned to the original hotel the next day. They were able to re-sell my room, and that's how they made extra money. I ran into a number of tourists in the lobby who were also being told that their room was unavailable. Rooms were only available to those who had not yet paid, as they had the option of going elsewhere.

I sent many emails to the booking website but never received a reply.

I recently took a look at the hotel website and people are still writing negative reviews, mentioning the scam.

[Jun]

I've had something similar happen in Ayutthaya, except as the alternative room was of an acceptable standard, I went a long with it for one night. Since it wasn't what I booked, they still got scathing reviews on two websites, which helps others to make informed decisions.

If the alternative room is unsatisfactory, perhaps the way to deal with that is to photograph the alternative room, refuse to accept it and demand a refund off the booking company. Followed by taking it up with the credit card company or small claims court, if the jurisdiction of the booking company has such a thing ?

I have learnt the hard way to read through a couple of pages of reviews, after staying at a Hotel 81 in Singapore, stupidly thinking it would be a basic but professional hotel, rather like an Ibis. They had both regular guests and people renting it by the hour, so there was a lot of noise from the corridor & adjacent rooms until about 5:00 am. Some of the reviews explained this, so If I'm picking an unknown hotel, I read at least a couple of pages of reviews now.

[fountainhall]

A few years ago I wrote a scathing review of a hotel I stayed at in Hoian, Vietnam. It was one of many such reviews, which I foolishly ignored. I reserved a room via Booking.com, if I recall.

I sent the same review to the booking site but it refused to post it.

Scams in Vietnam are not uncommon. 8 years ago friends of mine booked a medium price hotel in Hanoi ($50 per night or so) about two months in advance. On arrival they were told a problem had arisen with a group of rooms but they had been rebooked into a similar quality hotel. Perhaps unusually, on this occasion the replacement hotel was more or less the same and in a similar location. They were quite happy with it.

But surely the fact that reviewers are still complaining about the practice rather proves that reviews count for nothing. Besides, whilst booking sites/search engines may restrict reviews to people who actually booked through them and they say they are anxious to get your review after the event, there is zero obligation on them to print reviews they receive. I'm certain most really bad reviews never see the light of day. After all, these guys make their money from hotels. It's just not in their interest to print one lousy review when they probably have tens of thousands worldwide looking at that hotel every month and they are keen to get their highly room allocations filled as quickly as possible.

Getting refunds from a booking site? Good luck guys. You probably have more chance with a credit card company. But you will be swamped with paperwork and my guess is that few guests even bother unless they are spending a lot of cash in higher end hotels. As for a small claims court? Even though I agree people should consider this if they have spent a lot of cash on a dreadful holiday, once home from a holiday how many will seriously bother spending a lot of time - a lot - assembling all the paperwork and photos?

Besides, as i pointed out in an earlier post, booking sites T&C are absolutely clear. They absolve themselves totally of all responsibility for information supplied to them by individual hotels. So do you really believe a Mom and Pop hotel owner in Vietnam will fly over to the UK for the hearing? Of course not! And if the verdict goes in favour of the guests, how are they going to get their money refunded back from Vietnam? It'll never happen!