Is there an experience more invigorating than realizing you’ve just spent $350 on something that will give you nothing?
I just want to see the Eiffel Tower - why does it have to be so difficult?
I don’t think so. I’m fresh off 30 minutes with lastminute.com, a United Kingdom-based travel-booking website and I’m sure my blood pressure is up, my heart rate climbing into the upper reaches of the aerobic zone and all the vessels in my head are ballooning into aneurism-blowing dimensions.
We’ve run into trouble getting a hotel in Paris for the Easter weekend. It appeared we had one booked, but that booking was made in error and has been snapped back from us with the same pinching sensation of getting clipped with an elastic band.
I moved on to check out hotels at lastminute.com – I put in our dates – April 22 and 23 and up came a list of hotels including “secret hotels.” I should know better than to play with something so dubiously titled, but after checking the cancellation policy, decided to take a risk. It looked like the worse that would happen is I’d lose about $40 Cdn.
The idea behind the “secret hotel” is that the hotel is so high-end that it doesn’t want anyone to know it engages in this last-minute whack-down-of-prices. You only get the name and address after you’ve paid up.
Surprisingly, this is not the part of my exchange with lastminute.com to go wrong. The hotel, the Westin Hotel de Vendome (no secrets here on hobonotes.com), is indeed an upscale establishment with bottom prices at $430 a night. I would have paid $175 – not bad.
The problem was that I assumed entering the dates April 22 and 23 ensured that only hotels with those dates available would come up. Not so.
Lastminute.com spit out hotels with different dates – dates that I did not look at because of my assumption, and so at the very last phase of the purchase, the website informed me that I had just booked April 13 to 15 at the Hotel de Vendome.
I checked my watch. Today is April 13. What the what!?
I tried to get through to lastminute.com’s customer service – the privilege of calling them is charged to the customer, ie. me, at 10p -the “p” standing for pence or maybe 10 pounds per minute, which is really frustrating, because I don’t even know how much 10 pence actually is. Am I signing away my vital organs? Or just paying a penny or two?
When I finally got through lastminute.com’s multiple-layered phone system (press 1 for new bookings, 2 for existing bookings – even though I had dialed a number that was listed as specifically for existing books – remember I’m paying for every minute of the recorded system), I finally get through to a nice woman with an East Indian accent, who for all I know is in Mumbai.
Not to complain about that – it’s the way of the world these days. I’m just making the observation. I will complain about it later.
She goes into what is obviously a scripted patter about lastminute.com’s policies, about 80-pence-or-pounds into it, I say, “I’m paying for the privilege of being bamboozled, just tell me straight up: Can I cancel? Can I change dates, yes or no?”
She went to Script page no. 2, at which I interrupted her again and said, I just need to know, can I cancel or switch?”
Flip to Script page no. 3, and I said, “I get it. I can’t cancel, but you’d rather I pay more of this per-minute rate to hear it.”
She put me on hold while she called the hotel. 40-pence-or-pounds later, she came back to tell me they had agreed to cancel the booking without any charges. Apparently, the refund will show up on my credit card account in 7 to 10 days, which brings me to another complaint.
Why can they take my money in a nano-second, but take more than a week to hand it back?
So in the end, lastminute.com did the right thing, so I can’t say for sure they are the Devil Incarnate, but I can say that providing different booking dates than those entered in the search is definitely misleading.
Postscript: I’ve had an hour and two chocolate yogurts to calm down, and so in the final analysis, I have to give lastminute.com the thumbs up for cancelling the reservation. I also received an email confirmation of this from another customer service rep within that hour, which was reassuring.
HoboNotes 
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We have had so many positive experiences too. The negative ones are good for a story & perhaps some learning lessons. All travel experiences are so different, aren’t they!
I am so glad you are sharing this with us in this form.
Great idea 🙂
No, the book will not be enitled “Travel blessings.” It was meant to read, Travel blessings to you. Hmmmm maybe this is prophetic and the title should be “Travel Blessings.” lol
Hey Pat – Thanks for sharing. That is a horrific travel story – better than mine any day. Or should I say worse? If nothing else, there’s nothing like misery to make a memory stick. Glad it all worked out.
What a “to do” as my English family would say. I am glad they came thru with a refund for you. We experience the same here with refunds from bookings. It takes longer to get your money back than to give it to them. So frustrating!! I read all your Hobo notes and love them ……….. a traveller at heart, I am! Haven’t read your lastest but will do so now. Thought I would just say “hi” on here and hope that the rest of your time away goes “smoothly.” Life is full of “ups and down” as a song we listen to frequently, reminds us.
I am reminded of one European trip we took for our 30th anniversary. All went well until Athens when Bernie had his wallet stolen on a bus with visa card etc. in it. We were squeezed onto the bus like sardines as it was the bi-annual Greek transportation strike……..the rascal was able to get his wallet easily. Prob. was, we were pre booked to go the next day to Austria, Paris and then London. We lost all of those bookings because we were stuck there………..no visa, no wallet & we had to report this to the Greek Police Station for Insurance purposes. Our knowledge of the Greek language is nil. A kind man from our hotel put B. on his motorcycle and went up with him to translate. I lay on my bed, sobbing and thinking about how I could instantly fly home. It was my birthday, to make matters worse. In the end we went to the Canadian consulate and borrowed some money to fly to London, where my kind aunt took us in until the visa card came.
Yes, I realise I should write a book on our travels………much to look back on.
Well Joanne, here I am telling you my story. Thought it might be a comfort. There are a number of other interesting chapters to this same story which I will write in my book Travel blessings,
Pat