Hotels.com cancelled my booking

[Vivkins3]

We were supposed to be going away this weekend for 3 nights to a Biker rally at Weston Super Mare. We booked our hotel on 24th April and having received confirmation of the booking we bought our event tickets and booked our cats into kennels. This evening at about 5pm we had an email from Hotels.com saying the hotel was "unable to accept our reservation" - even though we'd booked 10 days ago. I've sent an email to hotels,com and I'm pasting it below. My questions: Does anyboyd know where I can find the registered office of Hotels.com in case I have to sue them? Is my credit card company liable for my out of pocket expenses? Hotels.com have (without my consent) "forced" the cancellation of the reservation by refunding my fee. Email sent as follows:

I booked this hotel on 24th April and you took £180 from my credit card for the booking on the same day. This forms what is called a "Contract". This evening you sent me an email saying that you were unable to honour your part of the contract as the hotel was unable to accept the reservation and asking me to call you “urgently”. I did so and spoke first to Keannerea who offered us some alternative hotels and guest houses but these were unacceptable to us. We had already looked at those hotels whilst researching the trip and rejected them because their Trip Advisor reviews were so bad. She said that if none of the other accommodation was acceptable, she could cancel the reservation. I told her that we had incurred other costs in the booking of this trip, ie Event tickets costing £40 and £80 kennel fees for our animals. I asked if she would also refund those additional costs and she agreed to do so. I therefore asked her to confirm that in writing by email before I agreed to the cancellation of the reservation. An email arrived within a few minutes stating NOT that Hotels.com would reimburse my Event tickets and kennel fees but simply cancelling the transaction and refunding my £180. I immediately replied stating that I had NOT agreed to cancelling the transaction and that you may NOT unilaterally cancel it without my agreement. After further argument she transferred me to Natalie Hudson who was also unwilling to be of assistance and transferred me to Nancy Boyd. Nancy Boyd told me there was nothing she could do as the reservation had been cancelled. She put me through to Norman Novair in “Customer Care” who told me that the only person who WAS authorised to agree to reimburse us for our costs was Nancy Boyd but she couldn’t do it because the reservation had been cancelled.
I repeat yet again that I DID NOT agree to cancel the transaction. As far as I am concerned, the contract stands and Hotels.com are in breach of it.
You have taken upon yourselves to refund the £180 I paid to you for my 3 night stay at the Rosita Hotel, but as that was done without my consent, the contract was not cancelled. I therefore demand from you further reimbursement of my Event tickets in the cost of £40 and £80 kennelling fee; total £120 UK Sterling.
If it is necessary to take this further, in addition to the above £120 I shall also be claiming from you compensation for my disappointment at being unable to attend the event, loss of enjoyment, the 3 hours of my time spent on the telephone this evening, the cost of telephone calls to your London number (not Freephone), time spent in correspondence, plus all costs and expenses I shall inevitably incur in pursuing reimbursement.
I would remind you that your own conditions state that if WE had wished to cancel the contract at this late stage,(ie, less than 24 hours before we were due to check in) we would be liable for 100% of the cost of the booking.

[robert551069]

I was terribly sorry to hear your bad news about the cancelled hotel booking.
Dare I suggest that you book for just one night direct(not through Hotels.com) with another hotel in the hope that some fellow bikers may know of a vacancy in the hotel they are staying at?
I expect you will already have considered staying outside Weston-Super-Mare.

[Buenchico]

Hotels.com effectively acts as a travel agent, not as a hotel operator. Accordingly, your contract (if one ever existed) was ultimately with the hotel, not with Hotels.com.

As Hotels.com is an American company, any legal action against them would need to be carried out via the US courts (or, more specifically, in Texas). The registered office of the company is 10440 North Central Expressway, Suite 400, Dallas, Texas 75231.

If you phone Weston-super-Mare Tourist Information Office, they should be able to find you suitable accommodation:
01934 417117 (0900-1800)

Alternatively, The Richmond Hotel is generally well-reviewed in TripAdvisor
http://www.tripadviso...Somerset_England.html
and is available for 3 nights (Fri/Sat/Sun) for 2 people through Laterooms.com for £195
http://www.laterooms.com/

or the Walton Park Hotel, just down the road in Clevedon, is also worth considering for £173 from the Best Western website:
http://www.tripadviso...Somerset_England.html

http://www.bestwestern.co.uk/

Chris

[IggyB]

Sadly I believe cancellation and the refund of expenses is covered in the terms and conditions, though I only can read them they seem to have covered this situation
http://www.hotels.com...terms_conditions.html

[IggyB]

Sorry that should say "I only scan read them"

[mike11111]

What was the reason for the cancellation? Was it because they were overbooked or because of the nature of the event you were attending?

[buildersmate]

One can understand your disappointment but I don't think you will be successful in your demands to Hotels.com. Buenchico has given you good reasons why; in addition the organisation appears to have reasonable attempts to solve the original cancellation, but you rejected them.

[Vivkins3]

Mike - no we were not given a reason - simply "This is an urgent message regarding your reservation with the Rosita Hotel. Unfortunately the hotel is unable to accept your reservation for your upcoming stay. Due to these unforeseen circumstances, we would like to offer you comparable alternate accommodations". There is very little accommodation available now - indeed before we booked the accommodation we had rejected most of the ones they offered on account of their poor ratings. One of the places they offered had 6 Trip Advisor reviews - one saying "average", one saying "poor" and FOUR saying "terrible". It would be unreasonable to expect us to travel from Kent to Weston Super Mare on a bike on the off chance that we would be able to find decent accommodation. We actually spoke to the hotel direct and they said they would be able to put us up on the Friday night and Sunday night but that we would have to change hotels for the Saturday night. This kind of chopping and changing is not my idea of a decdent weekend away. We had booked a nice hotel with good reviews and nothing hotels.com offered was comparable - we are in our sixties and don't expect to have to "rough it".

Buildersmate - I hope the above also covers your answer - they were unable to offer comparable accommodation.

[donnaanna]

i am a travel agent and unfortunatelly this happens with hotels and hotel.com occasionally. they do have a duty to offer another accomodation, which they did, and if it is not accepted they must refund the cost of the booking. they are not liable for any other expenses as they have not sold you a package - they sold you just the hotel. my only advice is that this is a situation where travel insurance kicks in - i am sure you do have one, even if you did not purchase one for this trip specifically have a look as most banks now have travel insurance as addition to the bank account.

[Vivkins3]

Yes we DO have travel insurance as we travel quite a lot. I don't believe though that anybody is entitled to "force" the cancellation of a contract by dint of refunding the payment.

[Vivkins3]

Doesn't our credit card company bear some responsibilty too?

[Skyline D]

Your credit card company isn't going to any more than refund your hotel cost at best, and you've already got that back so I fail to see what else you could expect them to do.

I also can't see particularly how this is the fault of hotels.com from the info supplied. It appears the hotel can no longer honour the booking. Either they over-booked, or some rooms have become unusable for whatever reason (fire / flood / etc) and they have had to cancel. It's unfortunate but I'd have thought any complaint was with the hotel itself, not the agent. The agent can't possibly be expected to refund peripheral costs they did not arrange (though they could do so as a gesture if they so wished).

[Vivkins3]

Thanks everybody for your answers. I always thought that the person to whom you paid your money was the person with whom you had a contract. I also thought that the credit card company was as liable (in the event of a contract going wrong or faulty goods or whatever) as the person with whom you had the contract.

So, mindful that we made and paid (in full) for our booking on 24th April and that the booking was for the nights of 4th, 5th and 6th of May - they didn't notify us until the evening of 3rd May that they were not going to honour the transaction (less than 24 hours before we were due to check in and some 10 days after they took our money for the booking) - does the hotel have some culpability? As Judge Judy would say - who do you think is responsible for our out of pocket expenses?

[Hopkirk]

Try Laterooms.com

[bednobs]

hiya, i can see you are upset, but it seems to me that you have had the answer several times (from abers who are usually very reliable when it comes to law answers) so i cant really see how repeating the details will get a different or more right answer. you again mention your credit card but i can't see what they would do as you already have a refund.

[Vivkins3]

Thanks for your answers but nobody has said who should be responsible for our out ofpocket expenses. Somebody suggested we try our holiday insurance but there is a £50 excess on that.

[ladybirder]

Have you read Buenchico's helpful post at 04.34?

[Hopkirk]

You have incurred the out of pocket expenses yourself, by choosing not to travel, when alternative accommodation was available and offered.

If you didn't want to lose the money, you should have accepted an alternative.

[bednobs]

you. You could still book rooms now, then you wouldn't have any out of pocket expenses

[Vivkins3]

No - decent hotels are NOT available. Even the Rosita (the hotel we originally booked) is still SHOWING as available but it isn't. The proprietor said he would "fit us in" for the Friday night and Sunday night but that we would have to move out for the Saturday night. I don't consider being shunted around like that to be an "acceptable alternative".

We didn't go back on the contract so why should we be out of pocket?

[buildersmate]

'Decent' is not a clearly definable parameter - it is a qualitative measure and you have particular standards. I'm not attacking that, merely saying that other guests may be have accepted the alternatives offered.

We can keep going around in circles on this; a number of generally-reliable folk have made suggestions as to what the organisation will say in response to your email. But it isn't us that you need to convince. If the above has helped you rehearse the arguments for a dialogue with hotels.com then that's surely a useful thing. There are no harm in trying, but I would rate your chances of a good-will payment greater than £25 as less than 10%.