I booked a hotel room on Hotels.com. The website promised no deposit would be taken and that cancellation was free. Within minutes, however, €199 (£173) – half the total of the two-night stay – was debited from my card. Hotels.com insisted this was a “pre-authorisation fee”.
Their terms and conditions state that providers may verify a customer’s card and balance by charging a “nominal” amount that’s either refunded or deducted from the final bill. That sounds suspiciously like a deposit to me. HB, Gorebridge
I covered an identical issue last summer when a reader found half their €940 hotel cost had been deducted minutes after booking on Hotels.com.
The web giant claimed the sum was not a charge and was therefore in line with its terms and conditions (T&Cs), but eventually told me it was a mistake. In its initial responses to your complaint it insisted that the “nominal” sum mentioned in its T&Cs can vary and that a 50% deduction was therefore perfectly acceptable. When I got in touch it backed down. “In this instance we can see that the amount used in the pre-authorisation was higher than the nominal amount we usually expect,” a spokesperson said. “While the money was released by the hotel, we are contacting the customer to offer a gift of goodwill by way of apology for the inconvenience.” You later received a €58 gift card and a promise that “action has been taken” to prevent this happening again. Time will tell.
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