Hotel will not refund

Bigbangr1 said:
I paid true PayPal but don't have a PayPal account.
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I think the reason your bank might be being difficult is because PayPal automatically defend every single chargeback. The last time I saw their figures in marketing materials, they claimed to have 99.5% success rate in reversing chargebacks, and that's why hotels use them. PayPal pride themselves on this, and even provide an 'insurance' against chargeback to their customers.
So, the bank are probably suggesting you go through PayPals dispute resolution first?
 
Booked a 3 night stay in Venice last August, arrival Wednesday, departing Saturday in mid March, with the hotel directly, booking dot com had similar pricing, but they did have the full bedroom type choices, like the hotel did.

I prepaid, and knew the risk of this, and it was a good bit cheaper.

when i asked the hotel about the virus implications, they immediately offered(without me even asking), a reservation date change to any dates of my choice for the rest of 2020, so i moved it to October, at zero additional cost.

I don’t believe i would have received the same flexibility, if i had booked with one of the hotel wholesalers like booking dot com. In my revised reservation, i also included a Saturday night, which is the most expensive night to stay in the hotel- this was not an issue.

It can work out better to book directly with the hotel.
I would be confident, if it turns out the city remains on lockdown in October, the hotel would offer a further date change, however i am hoping thats less likely, as its 6 months from now.
 
Leo said:
Chargeback is not a panacea for everything, the grounds as explained will not be accepted.
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Chargeback doesn't work the Booking agent has contested the charge back even though I have several emails telling me I can have a full refund.Visa gave me back the charge and then took it back again despite me sending them the emails
 
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Lesson learned from this.
Always book with the hotel direct not a booking agent using Visa card, not Paypal
Never pay the full price when booking, as worse case only pay deposit. Say no if they want to have these condition, there are other hotels which are not as strict
If we all try and do this, they will have to relax their conditions
 
roker said:
not Paypal
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I avoid PayPal at all costs these days. Even if they find in your favour, they will only refund you if they can take the funds from the other party's account, at least VISA & MC will refund you and then chase the other party..
 
We , my wife and I usually use booking.com but sometimes with the hotel but will always use the free cancellation option. It is usually more expensive but does give us peace of mind . So far we have had no problems.
 
roker said:
Chargeback doesn't work the Booking agent has contested the charge back even though I have several emails telling me I can have a full refund.Visa gave me back the charge and then took it back again despite me sending them the emails
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Update on this, it went through a process called pre arbitration and it was found in my favour against Booking.com, Visa will now refund my account.
I don't understand why Booking.com would oppose when the hotel had agreed to give me a full refund
 
noproblem said:
Penny wise and pound foolish is a good old saying. The OP had an option to pay a small amount in order to give him the right to cancel, they decided not to pay that premium and now they want the cancellation. Happened to me once, didn't happen again. Lesson learned and why should your age have anything to do with this?
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I am not canceling the hotel is cancelling
 
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roker said:
Visa will now refund my account.
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Well done for seeing this through, and it's absolutely the correct result in your case.

roker said:
I don't understand why Booking.com would oppose when the hotel had agreed to give me a full refund
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Kind of guessing here.

There are 2 different ways hotel agents work:
1. Just take a commission on the booking
2. 'pre buy' a bulk number of hotel rooms for the year at a discount, and resell them.

Just because the hotel was happy, doesn't mean the agent wasn't going to be out of pocket if they'd bought in advance.

If it's a busy hotel in London, they would sell thousands of rooms in advance to booking agents. That's why sometimes you'll see booking websites still showing available rooms even if the hotel tells you they are sold out.
 
Update on this, it went through a process called pre arbitration and it was found in my favour against Booking.com, Visa will now refund my account.
I don't understand why Booking.com would oppose when the hotel had agreed to give me a full refund
 
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