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Comment by benjaminwootton | Hacker News Reader

I had over 1000 nights booked through booking.com.

Once I turned up at an apartment which didn’t exist (it was a scam listing) and they were absolutely useless in helping us or issuing a refund.

I moved exclusively to Hotels.com since then who offer a free night for every 10 nights you book.

In this case allowing people to list their own properties on their website without checks was really bad for their brand.

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That always sound like a damn impressive story to be read by some booking.com executive. Sure, you are just a single customer, but 1000 nights is quite impressive. To lose such a loyal customer over something that shouldn't have happened in the first place is a bummer.

I guess I should try hotels.com someday as well.

> I guess I should try hotels.com someday as well.

Just so folks are aware, there are essentially only 3 major OTA (online travel agency) brands:

Booking Holdings: Booking.com, Kayak, Priceline, Agoda (and also OpenTable)

Expedia Group: Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, Travelocity, VRBO (aka HomeAway), Trivago, Hotwire, Cheap Tickets, Wotif

AirBnB: AirBnB and Hotel Tonight

TripAdvisor is also standalone (they previously spun out of Expedia) but their business, based on recommendations, is a bit different than the others.

I only managed to get it resolved by emailing most of the leadership and creating noise on social media. I hate these web companies who want the profits of a marketplace but none of the obligations.

The Hotels.com free night is not as good as it sounds. It’s valued at the average price of the 10 stays. It will only cover one nights worth of stay and does not cover the taxes and fees. So it not the 9% off it sounds like.

Also the fact that they charge you $5 to redeem rewards on the website but not their app suggestions there are some shenanigans going on.

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