A friend and I had a series of problems with our three-week holiday to India in February, several parts of which were booked through Booking.com.
We used the travel website to book a connecting flight from Delhi to Ranchi, but when I tried to check in online, the airline, Vistara, said I had cancelled the booking, which wasn’t true. I was told I would need to pay £57 to reinstate the tickets. We had a flight to catch so I agreed, thinking I would chase for a refund when I got home.
The next problem came when we got to the Oyo Flagship Hotel Krisna Palace in Lucknow. We arrived at 9pm and were due to pay 4,200 rupees (£40) in cash for a two-night stay, but the receptionist said the hotel didn’t have the licence to accommodate guests who were not Indian citizens. Booking.com gave us no warning that this hotel wasn’t suitable for us. Many nearby hotels didn’t have a suitable licence either so we ended up walking for hours with our bags and it was nearly midnight by the time we found somewhere to stay. We ended up paying 5,000 rupees (£47) for one night.
Then on the day we were due to fly home from Delhi, I got an email saying that our connecting flight from Kangra had been cancelled.
Booking.com told me to contact Alliance Air to get an alternative one, but I couldn’t get through. I later found out that the airline had cancelled the flight in January but we hadn’t been told.
We had to get to Delhi that evening to catch our international flight back to the UK so our stress levels were now through the roof. The only flight we could get that day was with the airline Spicejet, costing £655, which I booked. When we got home I was refunded £178 for the Alliance Air flight. Despite speaking to Booking.com about all these problems, it’s now May and I’m still £534 out of pocket.
Paul Raworth, Birmingham
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Troubleshooter says
I regularly hear from readers who have had problems with bookings made through intermediary companies. It can be tricky to work out where things have gone wrong when multiple businesses are involved.
While you used Booking.com to compare flights, it has a partnership with the travel agent GoToGate that had booked the tickets. GoToGate blamed the airline Vistara for cancelling the booking and told you to take it up with them.
But when I called Vistara on your behalf it said either you or the travel agent had cancelled the booking, although it wasn’t able to confirm who had done this. You ended up on the same flight in the same seats with the same baggage allowance so it sounded as if a mistake had been made, but I wasn’t able to get to the bottom of who was to blame.
So what about your issue with the hotel in Lucknow? The hotel told Booking.com that it did have an appropriate licence to welcome foreign guests, but this contradicted its website, which says that only Indian citizens are allowed. I checked the reviews on Booking.com and other guests had also been turned away on these grounds.
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As a goodwill gesture Booking.com has refunded the cost of the more expensive hotel you had to use. It has also stopped taking reservations at that hotel.
With your third problem, it turned out that when Alliance Air cancelled its flight in January, GoToGate failed to forward you the email, which it blamed on a technical issue. GoToGate has now paid you £477, meaning that your replacement flight cost only as much as the original one. You have a total refund of £524 and were pleased to get most of your money back.
Booking.com said: “This is not the experience we would want for anyone heading off on a trip and we’re sorry to hear about the issues the customer faced. Our aim is to enable smooth travel experiences and in the very rare instance that there is an issue, contact our customer service team for further support.”
You said: “It’s crazy that I needed your help to get this sorted, but I would like to thank you. Needless to say, we won’t be using Booking.com again.”
My North Face coat was faulty
In September 2022 I paid £160 for a coat from The North Face for my daughter that came with a two-year warranty. In December last year the logo on the back of the coat peeled off and made it look like a cheap fake. The North Face offered me a full refund and said it would send the money to the John Lewis account I had paid with. I said that the account had been closed since October 2022 after John Lewis changed its credit card provider from HSBC to NewDay.
The North Face said it would send the money to that account anyway, then wait for the funds to bounce back. Only then could it issue a refund via an alternative payment method.
By February I hadn’t heard anything so I chased The North Face and it said it had sent the refund but the money hadn’t bounced back. I called the number on my old credit card statements, which put me through to HSBC, where I was told to wait for 60 days for the funds to bounce back, but nothing happened. So I called HSBC again and it said it could do nothing other than give me a letter to say that my account was closed to prove that I hadn’t received the funds.
I sent a copy of the letter to The North Face in May but am being completely ignored. It’s so frustrating — I have spent hours chasing this refund.
Sophie Brown, Cambridgeshire
Troubleshooter says
It would have been a lot simpler if The North Face had heeded your warning and arranged to send the refund to an active bank account. The retailer wouldn’t comment when I approached it, but companies usually send refunds to the original payment method to protect against fraud.
When a refund is sent to a closed account, the bank will automatically send the money back to the retailer. It’s usually then that the retailer asks for new account details.
HSBC didn’t have enough information about the transaction to send it back to The North Face so the £160 was in a holding account (a temporary home for money until a bank knows where to put it).
HSBC wasn’t able to find the payment when you asked because your husband was the main account holder on the credit card — you had told HSBC this from the start but the bank still struggled to connect the dots.
The bank said: “We are sorry for the issues Ms Brown experienced. Having reviewed the case, we have arranged a full refund.” It has also given you £150 compensation.
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