Left feeling cold by hotwire.com

Brendan Farrell contacted us to make us and others aware of dealings he has had with hotwire.com – a hotel booking company we have written about in the past. The hotwire.com website does deals with some of the world’s leading hotels which allows them to sell unsold rooms at reduced rates without advertising the discounts on their websites or other public forums, a move which many hotels fear would damage their brands and anger guests who booked at higher prices. At least that’s the theory.

In June, Farrell booked hotels for a trip to Portland and Seattle he planned to take in August. “In order to book through Hotwire, they require that you accept their rate and submit payment details before they reveal which hotel they have booked for you,” he writes. “The name of the hotel is only revealed after all of this is done. There is no possibility of changing one’s mind after the name of the hotel is revealed, without losing the amount already paid.”

The hotel he booked in Seattle through Hotwire was the Inn at Queen Anne and it cost him $164.97 to stay there for one night – not exactly a good deal for a two-star hotel but he presumed that the site was the cheapest way to go. “When I found out the name of the hotel I immediately checked its website to discover the rate on offer there was cheaper than the rate at which I had booked through Hotwire. It was $126 or $38.97 (24 per cent) cheaper than the Hotwire rate.”

He was annoyed but looked at Hotwire’s website and saw it had a “low-cost guarantee” which is supposed to mean if a cheaper rate for a similar standard of hotel in the same location on the same date(s) can be found, Hotwire will refund the difference between what they charged and the other lower rate.

“Presumably they are so confident that they are the cheapest source of rates they feel they can offer such a guarantee. In this case I found the exact same hotel (not simply a different but similar type of place) with a 24 per cent cheaper rate so naturally I immediately applied for a refund under the “low-cost guarantee”.

The Hotwire website stated that such applications would be responded to within 10 days.” He heard nothing from them and after about 12 days phoned to enquire. “I was told that it would take 10 working days so to call back again in a few days if I still had heard nothing. I phoned two or three times over the following four weeks, as I had received no e-mail communication from them, only to be told again on each occasion to check in with them again in a few days. I wasn’t pleased with these responses from their call centre personnel – they weren’t providing me with any useful information at all — so I sent an e-mail expressing my dissatisfaction and asking to know when I could expect the matter to be dealt with.

“The company e-mailed me in the middle of August and said they had investigated the matter and could find no evidence that the rate on offer on the hotel’s website was cheaper than their rate.”

They asked Farrell to send them a screenshot of the cheaper rate. “Luckily I had kept a screenshot (most people wouldn’t) so I sent it to them in a Microsoft Word attachment. I received a response stating that they could not open Word attachments due to the threat of viruses and asked that I fax the information to them within 72 hours. I explained that I was on holidays at the time (staying at the hotel I had booked through their website!) and that I did not have access to a printer or a fax machine so I would fax the information to them the following week. They said that this was okay and to fax it to them as soon as possible.”

He sent the relevant fax the following week at a cost of $4. “I then received an e-mail stating that because I had not sent the fax within 72 hours they were unwilling to refund me! I referred to and forwarded previous correspondence which had covered me with the “72-hour” requirement. They then sent me a generic e-mail stating that they regretted not being able to meet my expectations on this occasion and hoped to be able to do so in the future.”

At Pricewatch, we think this is unacceptable on many levels. The price in the first instance was too high; the failure to respond to Farrell’s queries was unacceptable; the insistence on a screen grab ridiculous; the inability to open Microsoft attachments and the requirement that he send a fax ludicrous; the 72-hour deadline was unfair; the breach of a promise to waive the 72-hour deadline utterly wrong and the stock response doubly unacceptable.

We contacted the company last week and supplied them with details of our reader’s complaint. We’re still waiting to hear back from them.