my post the other day about trying to submit a negative review of the terrible hotel I stayed in needs a follow-up. (see my initial post about hotels.com censorship).
I have insisted that hotels.com tell me why they have censored my review. I keep getting horribly formatted huge form letter emails in reply.
My review has been submitted 3 times now, and with no feedback or comment has been rejected/censored.
Today I got another in the series of frustrating emails. In the message it contains the entire policy statement, listing all the reasons a review can be censored. My review violated none of those reasons.
The email continues to basically say: yes one part of our company is censoring your review, but the other part of the company does not know why and won't take the time to find out. So much for that second part of the company being called Customer Care. ha!
I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. We have attempted to explain that there is no specific problems with your review, but for whatever reason, it may not be posted.
That's the last word from hotels.com on why they censored me. There is no problem with my review, but they still won't print it or tell me why.
Saying "for whatever reason it may not be posted" is just not acceptable as a response from customer service. Their system is database driven and surely tracks actions for later audit and manager review. If they wanted to, they could tell me why my review has been rejected.
I can only assume that hotels.com has something to gain by limiting negative reviews.
My experience has seems to indicate that hotels.com censors negative reviews. Hopefully at some point this will come to the attention of someone in that company that can do more than say "i don't know, go figure it out yourself"
I think I have more googleclout(tm) than you
I tried to link to you, but if you search for the magic phrase (that would be "hotels.com censors negative reviews") my post comes up pretty high and I don't see you on there at all. Is this a perk of feeding the hive mind?
thanks for the link
maybe it is a perk of feeding the hive mind, maybe it is something else. I have noticed that posts on my site take a few days to end up in google where posts used to show up faster. Maybe it's how I've reorganized my site, maybe the theme I'm using is not as search engine friendly as the one I used to use. maybe google hates me!
I recently used Hotels.com
I recently used Hotels.com for the first time to book a hotel for a business trip to Chicago. Upon completing my reservation I was utterly shocked to see the exorbitant extra fees charged by your website - the so-called "Tax Recovery Charges & Service Fees" - which amounted to over $200 or $40 per night. Of course, I also saw that my reservation could not be changed or canceled in any way. I am tempted to call my credit card company to tell them that the charges are fraudulent and unauthorized. I will never again use their service and will warn everyone I know to stay far away from Hotels.com.
Hotels.com; bogus claims and poor customer service
I booked a room in October 2007- it was expensive and though the Hotels.com reservationist assured me it was on La Rambla (a street in Barcelona, Spain), it was over a mile away! A huge disappointment as we could have stayed on La Rambla for the $200/night we were charged. I made sure I did everything correctly (as told to me by their reservationist) so I could get frequent flier miles posted to my Continental OnePass account from making this reservation. Before we took the trip I checked again with Hotels.com to verify that they had the information needed and I would not get a "oh, too bad, you didn't supply one of the numbers that we need." All was okay. Well, I waited 3 months and the miles never posted to my OnePass account. I called Hotels.com in January 2008. They told me to call Continental. I did. I was given another number to call. I did. An agent fixed everything and assured me "the miles will post to your OnePass account within 24 hours." I waited. I called Hotels.com after many weeks passed. I was passed around to various agents (who spoke an unintelligible English) in Hotels.com. After an hour and a half - 90 percent of which was on hold so the agent could "get the answer" - I was told that the original reservationist did not go through the proper steps and I would not get any miles posted to my OnePass account.
Is it my fault that their reservationist messed up? I supplied the booking number, dates, etc. everything they asked for each time I called. Why was I told that the points would post the second time I called? And the third time? Their rewards for booking is bogus.
Beware! I am convinced, by the way I was treated, that the consumer will not get any of the promised perks by when booking through hotels.com.
my review has been censored too
I have booked a room with 2 queen beds through hotels.com, for a number of nights. Upon arrival, we were told that the hotel was full and we could only get a room with a king bed. The situation was pretty awkward as we were 2 unrelated people. The hotel clerk told us, nearly in these words, that we could stuff ourselves. When I called hotels.com for help, they told us, after conferring with the hotel, that we could cancel our reservation without paying a penalty on the cancellation, implying that we were free to go out for the night into the street. In my review I mentioned the assistance hotels.com provided. Well, weeks have passed and later reviews than mine for the hotel got posted, but not mine. Hotels.com also promised a discount coupon for our hardship but I have yet to see it. Needless to say, I won't be a customer of hotels.com anymore. In the process, I have learned that hotels.com and Expedia were the same company.
thanks for the note
especially about the relationship between expedia and hotels.com, it's good to know what other companies to avoid. I think the best way to travel these days is to do some research on travel related blogs and reserve directly with the hotel, either via the web or phone.
lousy customer service
I had a review cencored too ... and it wasent that bad at all, just honorest about a couple of poor incidents
I guess the hotel complained, because suddenly it was gone.
They claim to have a gift certificate too, but when I tried to order I was redirected to a page that said it dident excist and it was a 3rd party´s problem. I wrote them and they claimed it was Hotels.com´s problem and they dident offer that service through hotels.com any more (I can understand why now).
I wrote Hotels.com´s support about this and what I should do ...... one week ago ... still no answer.
Hotels.com SUCKS !
something to try,,,
I tried to post a negative comment on a ste and they had some kind of baysian filtering to detect negative comment. I used spam-like techniques and this enabled by comment to be accepted. So if they do not use human filters that would work. Try: e rror, mis take, li ed or even suck3d and see if it works.
cute, i'll give it a try
I just tried to post my review again, but it seems that their system won't let me do so anymore.
I enter the reservation code and name of guest, and it tells me that it can't find a match in the system, that I should go back to the 'my reservations' page and get the correct info. Well, the info it can't find a match on is the info from their site.
Shrug. Maybe it's just been too long between my stay at the hotel and my attempt to post the review again and their programmers were too lazy to code user-informative error messages.
This entire experience has taken something that could have been viewed as a minor annoyance -- one that I could forgive as a customer and would not have effected my continued use of hotels.com -- and made it so insulting that I have been motivated to actively publicize how terrible they are as a company.
I'll never use them again and have done what I can to make sure my family and friends are also informed enough to avoid using hotels.com. If I ever meet someone that has hotels.com (or parent company expedia.com) stock, I tell them to get out now... before it becomes clear to all the level of fraud, deception and lack of respect that exists there and the company is pushed into bankruptcy.
Hotels.com ignored my negative review
I had a miserable experience at the Sahara hotel in Las Vegas booked through hotels.com and submitted a suitably negative review. It was never posted on hotels.com, if you look on there now there are only positive reviews and I find that hard to believe having stayed in the Sahara.
I asked them why they didn't post it and they replied like a politician by ignoring my question and assuring me "the matter has been fully investigated", whatever that is supposed to mean.
good luck!
thanks for posting. let me know if you have any luck trying to get a reasonable response from them about why they refused to print your negative review.
I'm still waiting for a reply to my last email to them. It seems that their policy is to simply ignore customers if they can't confuse them into shutting up.
hotels.com is simply based on fraudulent ideas put forth by their advertisements. there is no ability to trust the reviews, there is no team of experts double checking the validity of information about a hotel, they don't provide any value and they have less than no concern for you as a customer.
We had a bad experience with
We had a bad experience with hotel.com we have been charged by hotel.com as well as the hotel when we checked out and we are not getting our money back. We have been charged twice.
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