I will Never Book Third Party AGAIN

[ariese34]

We booked a Hotel through Southwest (offering us 2000 points for the booking) on July 29. I just so happened to look through my email on Sept 4 looking for my confirmation email. I could not locate it. I called the hotel to ensure that our reservation was still good. The lady at the front desk told us that our reservation was cancelled on July 29. She received an email stating as such. I assured her that this was a huge even that we had no intentions of cancelling and there was a mistake. She told me she would try to get ahold of booking.com because I couldnt get their automated system without some pin code. After some time the front desk called me back and said that another third party called AGODA that is affiliated with southwest booked my hotel which is based in Thailand?? She said they cancelled my reservation because when they booked it the hotel was full. They told the receptionist I received a refund (which I did not). This event that I was going to is a huge Rally that takes hours to drive to. All the hotels are booked. Luckily the hotel had ONE room left. I went ahead and booked the room and disputed the charge through my Chase Southwest card. Can you imagine if I had not of called? Drove 4 hours only to find out we had no place to stay? I could not reach anyone at Booking.com. I still cant even today. There is no phone number for customer service at Southwest. I wont be receiving my points as promised and I cant find an appropriate related email to my issue to complain. WOW! Good thing Chase is giving my money back. 

[jksobonya]

Not getting a confirmation e-mail when you booked should have been your first read flag. You always get a confirmation e-mail with every booking. You could have gone to Southwesthotels.com, clicked "Manage my booking" and clicked "Resend confirmation e-mail" to see if that would have sent anything about a cancellation. 

With that said, Booking.com is the parent site and Agoda is a child site - Priceline, Kayak, Agoda, OpenTable, and others are all a part of Booking.com. 

--Jessica

[dfwskier · Accepted solution]

If one does a web search for the term "booking.com reviews." one finds thousands of reviews and the vast majority are 1 star --

[ariese34]

I booked another hotel the same day, got in a hurry and assumed that confirmation email I received was for that hotel. I never actually read the email. I just saw it was from Southwest. My fault but totally Irrelevant. I should have been able to retrieve my reservation at anytime. I’ve been doing business with Southwest for a very very long time. I trusted their services. First mistake. Also, when I did do just that (request to resend confirmation email) nothing ever came. I still to this day cannot get ahold of booking.com without a pin # I’ve called every single day 

[SoCalFlyer97]

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@ariese34 wrote:

We booked a Hotel through Southwest (offering us 2000 points for the booking) on July 29. I just so happened to look through my email on Sept 4 looking for my confirmation email. I could not locate it. I called the hotel to ensure that our reservation was still good. The lady at the front desk told us that our reservation was cancelled on July 29. She received an email stating as such. I assured her that this was a huge even that we had no intentions of cancelling and there was a mistake. She told me she would try to get ahold of booking.com because I couldnt get their automated system without some pin code. After some time the front desk called me back and said that another third party called AGODA that is affiliated with southwest booked my hotel which is based in Thailand?? She said they cancelled my reservation because when they booked it the hotel was full. They told the receptionist I received a refund (which I did not). This event that I was going to is a huge Rally that takes hours to drive to. All the hotels are booked. Luckily the hotel had ONE room left. I went ahead and booked the room and disputed the charge through my Chase Southwest card. Can you imagine if I had not of called? Drove 4 hours only to find out we had no place to stay? I could not reach anyone at Booking.com. I still cant even today. There is no phone number for customer service at Southwest. I wont be receiving my points as promised and I cant find an appropriate related email to my issue to complain. WOW! Good thing Chase is giving my money back. 

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Hello-

I've used SW Hotels a number of times for the points bonus and the confirmation email comes in immediately after booking. On the morning of the hotel arrival, a second email comes in with instructions of how to check in.

I would confirm whether your email is correct on reservation as I get the confirmation email with confirmation number immediately after booking. However, the fact that your July booking was cancelled but never refunded back to your credit card appears highly unusual. I'm not sure if any action was needed to claim the refund. I suspect they have an incorrect email address but I could be wrong. I would follow up again with using the following contact:

Your Concierge
concierge@southwesthotels.com
Toll Free: 1-844-782-9792
International: 773-770-4953 

ps. Not sure if they can assist in getting your bonus point value credited in some way (voucher, hotel credit, etc.) as 2,000 points is worth about $30 but worth it to ask. Don't know if this will happen considering the cancellation appears to have been done due to an oversale.

[CupCrusher40]

agree same

[ariese34]

Thank you for the number. I booked two hotels back to back. I received an email from one hotel but not that one. The lady at the front desk at the hotel that was cancelled confirmed everything regarding all my info when she looked in her system and the email from Agoda. She said my room was cancelled by Agoda because when they booked it after I booked it, there were no rooms available. Either way, I appreciate you giving me a number and I even called the airline side.. I’ve looked everywhere for somewhere to call and funny  no one can help me. Thank God we weren't stranded on the motorcycle 4 hours from home. Although our friends would have helped us out it would have just been a major inconvenience 

[bknedler]

I had same issue with never getting a confirmation email. I wanted to cancel the hotel room but the hotel said I had to go through SW (ie Bookings). I paid extra at time of reservation in order to have a refundable room (with covid out there I was worried I might need to cancel or something else might come up--which did). I used the concierge phone number provided above and got an AI bot asking for my confirmation number which I don't have. I kept keying in 0 and after several go rounds the AI gave me a live person to talk to. She confirmed it was a refundable room reservation since I was cancelling several days before the deadline. She asked several questions and cancelled the reservation (for which I did get a confirmation email). I have used SW hotels in the past without a problem. I won't use SW Hotels again without saving a PDF or screen shot of the reservation screen. I have been using SW hotels in order to get the Rapid Reward points btw.