"Hotels.com refused responsibility when I booked a hotel in Delhi through them and came to find the place was NOTHING like what they'd advertised; cockroaches in room, mold in all corners of the bathroom, leaking everything, no toilet seat at all (just totally missing), dirty, stained sheets from last number of guests, dirt in corners of floors, leaking windows, miserable c**phole of a place. Hotels.com just said, "Sorry, your problem, not ours, you already paid, hah!" No more. Will let people know far and wide that at some point, Hotels.com will not back them up and totally let them down (and keep their money!)"

"I booked a hotel for over Christmas (25 - 29th Dec 2019) with hotels.com back in July, when I arrived at my hotel I was told the reservation had not been sent to the hotels system therefor they had not held our room and they were booked out. I was on a remote Island in Mexico stuck with no data to call or accomodation - the hotel informed me that hotels.com will contact me to make another hotel reservation - they contacted me the next day (which of course was too late). I had to book another hotel 3 times the cost of our original hotel - as it was in peak season. I sent 5 emails to hotels.com, with no response - when I finally left the Island and was able to call they told me they could only refund me $100 for the inconvenience caused. I was $1200 out of pocket in the middle of a holiday - this was the worst experience I have ever had during a holiday, I lost most of Christmas day trying to sort this issue out and they have zero remorse. "

"Arrived at a hotel to find out there were no rooms available. Not easy to find a room in a popular spot during holidays. "

"Been using hotels.com for many years. First time I ever have problem with them and it's the final time I will ever use them.

I was booking a room on their app for my last minute business trip. Booked with my work email, after I click the final step to book room App got an error and quit my booking. Since I booked as guest, there's no information anywhere.

So I rebook with my personal email, since I have account with them. After everything was all done, I was double booked for the same room and same duration. So, call them to cancel 1 reservation. But I was told they have to charge me for 1 night penalty (within 24 hours from checkin). I talked to many representatives and managers, everyone stick to the same story. "We don't care what happened, you cancel within 24 hours we're not giving you full refund".

Finally I though I got someone that would help me. He said he'll ask the internet booking team to check on my first booking section and get back to me within 48 hours by email. It's been 4 days and now that they have my work email, all I get from them everyday are marketing emails.

Wish I can give negative stars"

"Hotels.com is a disgrace. Their support team was useless and (morally and legally) negligent in how hey handled my issue. I used their site twice only because they have a 'Rewards' program that claims to give you 1 in 10 free nights when you make reservations. This functionality did not work on their site, and I noticed the problem after making a second reservation, but they failed to rectify the issue, refusing to acknowledge responsibility for their system's own bugs (likely due to a database record mismatch error, for any other IT peeps out there..).

I outlined to their support team multiple errors that their system made with regards to: 1) recognizing my own login password(!), that I set TWICE and immediately failed to let me login (I eventually had to go to 'reset' password to log in); 2) not even recognizing that I had an upcoming reservation DESPITE BEING LOGGED ON WITH MY USER NAME AT TOP; 3) having wrong data in my user account record(!) (as confirmed by their own support team over the phone) that I certainly didn't put there; 4) did not consider me to even have an account with them (as per phone) beyond acknowledging my USER NAME and despite clearly having a database record of my account with correct email addres but other data randomly incorrect in it; 5) not registering me online for their Rewards program (as an additional requirement to having an account, mind you) when I in fact pressed their 'Join' button (tried several times), which simply re-loaded the page but did not alert me that I was not being registered, making it *seem* like there were no errors; 6) did not 'link' my reservations to their Rewards program despite having 'Joined'; 7) broken pages in two commonly used browsers that could have reasonably been the reason for critical functionality not working; 8) only first alerted me that I was not registered despite having followed all the directions (multiple times mind you) after I MANUALLY added a reservation to their Rewards program.

In my support emails, and during two overseas phone calls with them, I was given stock answers, like "You need to register your account...here's how..." and "Our Terms of Service prevent us from giving you rewards for reservations made before you are registered..." despite all the above technical/database issues explained to, and several acknlowdged by, them.

It is not legal in Australia to put the onus on the customer via a Terms & Conditions clause when the error is clearly made by the company. I explained this, and I AGAIN got the stock reply that my reservation was made before whatever timestamp their database gave them as my registration date, and therefore they 'could not' give me my points. COMPLETELY ignored the ENTIRE problem, and any sense of responsibility for them to give me my earned 'points'. Just denial, denial, denial.

I'm only out about $30 for the lost points, but after such a disgusting experience, I am reporting their behavior to the consumer protection authorities (the ACCC in Australia), and I strongly recommend that you avoid this website, because if you ever need support for your reservations, which happens more than you might think, this mob won't be raising a finger to help you.
"

"I am a regular Hotels.com user and I will NEVER use them again… BEWARE

We used Hotels.com to plan stays for our trip to Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia & Estonia. When I found out that one of the hotels booked was far below the standards of a hotel you would want to stay in, I went online to cancel (we were within the cancellation period). Unfortunately, Hotels.com “Your Bookings” area of the website was down. I proceeded to use chat to try and cancel. The representative on the chat told me that section was down for them as well and that I would need to call later to cancel, but that our request was logged in the chat. I went back into Hotels.com and booked the correct hotel and moved on.

When I called back to cancel I was told that it was outside the cancelation policy and that Hotels.com would call the hotel and see if it would be ok, to which the hotel rightfully said no. Hotels.com told me there was no record of their site ever being down, or of me having a chat, but that when I was back in the US I could call up and have them look into it.

Back in the US, I called to request the refund. I was again told that their site was never down, and that the hotel said no, so I was out of luck. After some arguing about this, the representative said “let me get my manager”. After a brief hold, the manager got on the phone – with the exact same voice as the rep – and stated that he would take the confirmation number from the reservation and have their investigations team search the chat logs from that day and find my conversation, and that they would get back to me in 24-48 hours.

4 weeks later and still nothing. I called again and was told all the same stuff – that their site wasn’t down and the hotel said no to the refund. I asked them to escalate the call more than 10 times during the 45-minute call, which never happened, though I was placed on mute for 10 minutes without notice before being told that their site was never down and I was wrong. Finally, after more arguing, the rep said they would get their manager – again, they had the exact same voice as the rep, so I’m thinking there is no such thing as a manager, but rather a really shady policy for customer service. The manager proceeded to ask me full details about what happened, then hung up on me.
"

"I was initially not happy with their customer service, but they eventually managed to give me back a refund. Probably will not use them again. I had to phone them 3 times."

"No way to contact this slime company. Avoid. Everyone loses by doing business with this type of unresponsive company. Even the number they gave Discover Card customer service for complaints is a phony. Here, try it yourself. 1 ***-***-****"

"There is 1 reason and 1 reason alone as to why I will now book ALL my hotel stays through hotels.com and that reason is customer service rep Lady Yvette!! She went way beyond what she needed to do .... and she was so easy to talk to, down to earth ... made me understand every step to the process of changing my hotel dates ....and her personality made me chuckle OFTEN! Whomever is in charge of raises ... Lady is FOR SURE in need of one because .... SHE is the reason Hotels.com now has a FOREVER, FOR-EVERY HOTEL NEEDED customer!
Thank you
SuZi (Sue Skinner)"

"The business's (Hotels.com) customer service is horrible. They have lost my business forever. I'm so unhappy that I will boycott their other businesses too:

I called their customer service to complain, but they don't care, the would rather not make things right over keeping you as a loyal customer. This prompted me to look for other unhappy people with their customer service, and I found many.

I do hope some lawyers finds an opportunity to sue this company!

I will use priceline.com or bookings.com or call directly to the hotel to match or beat hotels.com
I recently stayed at Lowe'sRoyal Pacific that I got smoking price under $200/night much, much cheaper than hotels.com

There rewards program is a con. A forbes article stated how great a value it provides and that you don't lose your reward stays. That is completely misleading and wrong, they took my 4 nights of rewards ( $700 value) for not staying at a hotel since my previous one a year prior.

They are owned by Expedia which owns many others I will avoid using:

BedandBreakfast.com
CarRentals.com
CheapTickets
Classic Vacations
Ebookers
Egencia
Expedia.com
Expedia Affiliate Network
Expedia Local Expert
Expedia CruiseShipCenters
Expedia Global Partner Solutions
HomeAway
Hotels.com
Hotwire Group
Orbitz
Travelocity
trivago
wotif
ALICE"

"I got burnt by hotels.com. I am Canadian and booked a hotel through their "secret prices" email offer for a Canadian hotel. Unbeknownst to be, their "secret prices" were in U.S. funds! The "deal" I got, with the exchange rate, cost me more than if I had booked directly with the hotel! Customer service would do nothing to fix this. I will NEVER use hotels.com again. "

"When calling the hotel to let them know we were going to be a little late they informed us that we did not have a room at all and that hotels.com should never have booked the room. After being on the phone for 45 minutes and our vacation being ruined they tried to give me a $75 credit for my next booking. Unprofessional &. inconsiderate NEVER WVER USE THIS SITE’S SERVICES "

"Was told that I would get a $75 tour voucher at check in. The hotel knew nothing about this. I called Hotel.com they said that the reservation was through Expedia. After being transferred around 3 or 4 times. Finally Hotel.com said that was not part of my package. Later I get an email saying if I would send them receipts they would check it out. Who keeps tour receipts. I will not be using Hotel.com ever again."

"There are several vacation rental sites available for booking accommodation during your vacation. I've always used Booking.com and Agoda. But this time my friend has recommended to try Hotels.com. The reservation process was smooth until they suddenly charged my credit card for the total amount of the reservation almost immediately after booking. That was a FREE change/cancellation booking, and I was not ready for such immediate expenses. I've got used to Booking.com and Agoda policies not charging a client in advance.

Anyway, I talked to their Customer Support to verify that in case of cancellation, everything will be immediately refunded. Well, unfortunately, that was not the case. I've now cancelled one night from three that was booked originally and received back only a small fraction of the originally paid nightly rate. They explained that this happened because the night rate in the original reservation increased.

This is beyond my comprehension why an original booking should fluctuate in price. In fact, such FREE change/cancellation policy cancels the entire meaning of the FREE change/cancellation, simply because in case of any changes you'll ALWAYS be fined as prices only increase with time. At some point, for changing your reservation, you may even be charged if the NEW price of the total remaining nights in your modified reservation becomes higher than what you originally paid.

Arguing with them that this is an absurd, and the free change/cancellation means literally FREE, and the paid amount should be returned in full didn't help. I don't know which other underwater stones and hidden charges are there with Hotels.com, but for conclusion, my sincere advice is to stay away from them.

In general, I wouldn't recommend any other vacation rental site over Booking.com and Agoda. They proved effective, trustworthy and transparent with time."

"they are dishonest and deceptive in their practices. Their price match guarantee is a joke as is their customer service call center. It is farmed out overseas by very young adults who can't pronounce the English language clearly.
"