My friends from Taiwan and I booked 2 rooms at Holiday Inn Hotel %26amp; Suites, Chicago Downtown, 506 W. HARRISON, Chicago, Il. USA for 6 nights in August 2009 through www.hotel-board.com. We paid immediately. We got the reply email which we can access to a voucher. The online status of ';my booking'; in hotel-board.com read: Confirmed.
However, few days later, there was an agent emailed my friend in Taiwan and said vaguely that the hotel we booked has a wrong address. We emailed them and requested a clearer answer. He replied again that what our change would be or if we would like a refund. We answered them firmly that we did not want change or refund, we want the hotel rooms because it is close to our Conference site.We checked the site, our booking status has changed to ';Amendment Processing [?]';!!! So we emailed them again that if they made mistake, they should discuss/negotiate with us. If they made a mistake and booked the wrong hotel for us, they could switch to Sheraton Chicago Hotel %26amp; Towers, Chicago at 301 EAST NORTH WATER STREET because this hotel has the same price range and not too far from our Conference site. But we asked them to reply us to discuss first. We haven%26#39;t heard from them for 3 days since then.
Please kindly give us advice as what to do. We have reviewed TripAdvisor.com and found so many negative comments about hotel-board.com which is too late for us. We also found so many charges that hotel-board.com is a fraud and so many people didn%26#39;t get the refund after several months. Many peole complained in Tripadvisor.com that hotel-board.com didn%26#39;t reply their emails nor answered their phone calls. There is ONE comment that ';hotel-board.com is legitimate and has office in UK and Canada';. Of course we can notice the 2 numbers in their website too. But if they are legitimate, please do as what they advertised.
We don%26#39;t know what to do. We are students and we can not afford paying twice for the travel to our Conference in Chicago in August, which is a prerequisite during our course of study. We don%26#39;t want to change anything. We just want the hotel we booked. If they made mistake, they MUST contact us and explained, and proposed an alternative which is acceptbale to us. Otherwise, they MUST refund us in full as we DID NOT request a cancel, it is rather THEIR OWN FAULT.
We have informed our bank of the possible fraudulent. Should we report the case with our crime investigation bureau? In Taiwan, it is enough evidence to charge such an action. We would be much grateful if anyone out there has an advice as what to do for us. And if the so-called hotel-board.com outta there see this forum, please kindly contact us as well. Thank you very much for all of your attention.
Does anyone know if www.hotel-board.com is a fraud???
I don%26#39;t know anything about this agency but it sure sounds like a scam. If it is a scam, they don%26#39;t ';have'; to do anything - only a legitimate agency would feel the need to be helpful. The first thing I would do is call or e-mail the hotel directly to see if you have a room booked. I would also request a refund from the agency and book the room myself, either directly with the hotel you want or with another hotel - if you have trouble, come back here with your dates and people will try to help you. There are many deals out there either directly through hotels or through sites that are legitimate. Book something that is cancellable and then keep looking for better deals. There is no need to go through an agency like the one you describe. Definitely talk to your investigative agency. Be prepared, however, for the possibility that you have lost your money. This time, come to Tripadvisor before you book, not after - there are some great people here that will be happy to help you. Also, I don%26#39;t know where your conference is, but the Holiday Inn and the Sheraton are not close together, so they can%26#39;t both be close to your conference site.
Does anyone know if www.hotel-board.com is a fraud???
That address is correct. Try calling the hotel.
Dear Warriorjan: Thank you very much for your advice. It is really bad if we lost the money. We鈥檝e already spent an equivalence of 3-year tuition fee to attend the conference. We don鈥檛 know if we still have money to pay for hotels again. The site is Hyatt Regency. We we call them first thing on Monday. Then we will ask for refund if no answer or no solution whatsoever. Then we will report to the Police Department. Then we will report the case to our newspapers and media. It now does not make any sense to us that hotel-board.com were a fake and still out there fishing innocent and na茂ve people. There must be someone some authority taking some sorts of actions asap.
Dear eBobIllinois: The hotel address is correct. It was the one we found on hotel-board.com which we thought close to our Conference site at Hyatt Regency (we checked google map). We did email the hotel. However, no reply after a week. I think there are some other Holiday Inn and Suite in Chicago (west area and O鈥檋are area). Hence the downtown Holiday Inn and Suite that we booked and paid for didn鈥檛 have our reservation yet. Is it true that hotels in Chicago do not reply to clients who do not have reservation with the hotels? Should we call the Holiday Inn and Suites and blame them? I don鈥檛 think so. Thanks a lot anyway.
If you paid with a credit card - contact them. They should be able to reverse the charge.
I think whether the hotel responds to an e-mail depends on the hotel, not whether it is in Chicago or somewhere else. Some are better at customer service than others. I would send an e-mail and then follow-up with a phone call. I would definitely cancel whatever you booked through this fishy-sounding agency and book it on your own, if possible. Keep copies of all correspondence, and never book with anything other than a credit card. Contact the credit card company as well. There are many scams out there and they are extremely difficult to police, as people running them could be anywhere in the world. The Holiday Inn is not that close to the Hyatt Regency, if you have a chance to change to the Sheraton you would be much closer to the Hyatt.
Dear Warriorjan: Definitely a good advice. Thank you. We will call them Monday morning UK time, then we will call the Canadian office by its Monday morning time too. We%26#39;ve already sent hotel-board.com emails asking clearly what we want. Of course, I am still hoping that hotel-board.com is just a bad-service company! Hope that they will react by the time we call them. Well, we might be too stupid to think so. We kept everything because my friend in Taiwan had to printout everything as evidence to obtain her US visa.
Dear Dave148: My friend did inform the bank who issue the credit card. However, the bank reply was negative to us. The bank did contact my friend immediately the time she keyed her card number for payment online. It checked whether it was her payment as it was over her regular payment amount. My friend did pay the bank afterward. Perhaps, I will ask the bank once again to see if they really can reverse the chard as you suggested. Do you have specific experience in such a situation where a bank has the authority to reverse the charge from credit card its customer used? Thanks
Any reservation you make, make sure you understand the cancellation policy. I myself prefer to pay extra and have a cancellable reservation, as opposed to a cheaper rate where all the money is prepaid but not cancellable. If you do not get what you paid for, you can dispute the charge with your credit card company and the company charging you will have to prove that you did receive the services they charged you for. You can receive much good advice on this forum as to hotel booking sites if you prefer to go that route, I know that people have mentioned travelzoo, expedia, orbitz, hotwire, etc. Again, make sure you are clear about the cancellation policy, and if you%26#39;re spending that much money, consider travel insurance.
I may be missing something here since this was brought up but if you paid by credit card and didn%26#39;t get the service you bought, the credit card will call this hotelboard and fight to get your room or a credit. The credit card company, such as Visa or MasterCard won%26#39;t just make you responsible for fraud. My credit card company would be my first stop before the police, interpol or FBI or CNN.
Dear ALL: Thank you for you advice. I will try everything you suggested and keep you posted.
I am Mark Derritz, Customer Service Manager at Hotel-Board.com . Our company is an online travel agency serving tens of thousands of travelers every year since 2004. We have registered offices in UK and Canada.
I think I can shed some light on the case in this forum thread. Our client made a booking to a hotel in Chicago from our company. While we
were confirming the booking with the hotel, it turned out that the booking was actually sent to another hotel of the same hotel chain and
we notified our client. We offered a full refund or a new booking to the desired hotel with that hotel%26#39;s own rates (in this case higher). This is what any other travel agency would do. A full refund order is in effect as of yesterday.
As a final note, although it is very easy to comment on Hotel-Board.com with words like fraud, scam, dodgy, and etc.; it is impossible to stay in business for 5 years if these were true.
No comments:
Post a Comment