My affairs with the booking.com customer service hotline
Why did this happen to me?? — Part I
During my entire 4+ months in South America, most things went quite smoothly. I was never robbed, stolen, or felt like I was in any immediate danger. However, as one can expect, some unexpected things happened and they made me question my life choices. I’ll talk about the two times I had to call the Booking.com hotline.
Episode 1: Accidentally booking a fake listing in Lima
I usually like to book apartment-type places rather than hotels because they tend to be cheaper, and the rooms more spacious. Preferably, I would use booking.com or other platforms to find these places rather than Airbnb because I don’t like getting rated for my stay. I dislike the feeling of almost getting judged when on vacation.
So I booked a place for Lima that was just like that: a simple private apartment in a convenient location in Miraflores. Coming from Cusco, I landed at Lima airport at around 3 pm, and I called an Uber directly to the property address.
As I began the 40-minute Uber trip, it suddenly came to my attention that I had not been informed about the check-in procedure. Naturally, I messaged the property on Booking.com, waiting for the instructions. 10 minutes later, no response. I began to feel a little suspicious but still decided to contact the WhatsApp number just in case they didn’t have their booking.com notification open. The number provided was available, so I messaged them. Blue ticks. Great. I waited another 20 minutes but no response. I was arriving soon, so I called the number directly. No answer either.
I arrived at the corner where I selected to be dropped off, and the driver could not find the exact building. I walked around the block with my two big bags to no avail. My final confirmation was when I deduced that the address provided did not logically exist based on all the buildings in the block. I angrily texted the WhatsApp number again, but I had been blocked. It was probably also a fake number, and some poor lad had to receive random messages from me. Ok fine, now what?
I had thought about the possibility of this during my car ride, so I had pre-located a Starbucks about 2 blocks away, where I could safely sort out a new accommodation. I arrived at the spot on the map and found it located at the lobby of a hospital. Why did this happen to me…
Luckily, there was an ice cream shop with seats nearby, and I went in there to order some random chicken rice salad just so I could pull out my laptop to pull myself together. I figured out the English-speaking customer support number for Booking.com, which is based in the UK. I pulled up my Skype credits and began calling. A familiar Filipino accent appeared on the other side, “Good afternoon sir, how can I help you?” I described the situation and offered to choose another place for me in 20 minutes.
I wanted them to send me an email confirming the options available to move to. The idea was that they would give me some options to rebook, based on what’s similar to my original booking (eg. prices, location, room types). I would have to book the new place myself while sending them the new booking code. They would then cancel the original booking on my behalf free of charge. Meanwhile, the surplus amount of what I was supposed to pay (anything above my original booking costs) could be refunded by sending them the new receipts.
[While this all sounds reasonable and smooth, these people hung up the phone and just disappeared with no news after the time frame they told me to expect. I had to call the same hotline 3 times, explaining the same situation with 3 different representatives for over an hour in total to have my booking sorted out. All this time I just sat at the ice cream shop with all my bags and my computer on my lap.]
They ended up getting me another similar place “in the area”. I accepted an option that was 1.6 km away and had to call another Uber to the new place. It was ok but not super ideal, but I just wanted to rest, so I took it regardless. It was the best first impression of Lima, but at least I knew how to deal with Booking.com.
In hindsight, the booking I made had only a handful of ratings, and the complete lack of messaging should have raised an alarm. Normally, these apartments would at least have an automated message sent to your inbox saying welcome please contact xxx number. I was slightly glad I learned a lesson here — as I reviewed all my future bookings, I found another few suspiciously unmanaged bookings that I canceled to avoid possible complications.
Episode 2: Hostel overbooked on New Year's Eve in Cartagena, Colombia
I was happy to understand how to deal with Booking.com, but I didn’t expect to utilize my skills 2 weeks later. A few months before my expected stay, I had booked a spot in a famous hostel in Cartagena’s old city called The Clock Hostel & Suites, and made a change on the booking dates the week leading up to it to stay extra time in Medellin.
As I pulled up to the hostel on no other day than New Year’s Eve, the front desk staff looked at the system and started acting stupid on me. He said that my booking was canceled on their system. I showed them my modified booking on my phone’s app. He looked back at the system and told me it was because I changed the date that it registered incorrectly on their system, so now there was no space for me. I was furious. Not just the fact that he acted all dumb and tried to blame it on me when it was their system that had the issue, but also just his general “I can’t help you” attitude. Mind this — I arrived at the hostel right at the check-in time, so there was no way the place was “full” at the time, they just chose not to put me in. He made a quick call to his manager, looking incredibly insincere to be of assistance, and told me that there was nothing he could do.
It doesn’t normally bother me when people only speak Spanish, but in this moment I was so close to lashing out at him in English. I took a pause and thought it would probably be in vain because he would have understood nothing, and barely squeezed out a line in Spanish to tell him this whole thing is your fault, not mine when he acted all innocent and helpless. Thinking of this person still boils my blood, although if I met him on the streets I probably wouldn’t recognize him again.
Realizing how useless it would be to continue the conversation, I removed myself and began calling Booking.com customer service. Here we go again.
This time, I was aware of the procedure, so I was quite calm while going through the steps. Finding the booking codes, call the hotline, wait for someone to come on the line, figure out which option was best. The catch was — it was New Year’s Eve this time, and Cartagena is one of the most famous places to spend New Year’s Eve (please do yourself a favor and choose Rio or Buenos Aires instead, or even Medellin. Cartagena is very anticlimatic and expensive). As a result, there was nothing “of a similar nature” unless it was of a higher price range, especially being that last minute. As you can imagine, Booking.com was quite stingy with price differences, and this non-Filipino (I love the Filipinos) customer service representative began giving me some shitty cheap options: hostels with a 7.x/10 rating and not even in the city center. I ended up having to search on my laptop while on call and appointed him a place that I found acceptable.
I ended up having to stay about 1.5km outside of the old city. It might not sound so far, but the moment you step outside of Cartagena’s old city at night, or even the edges with fewer people, it gets quite sketchy. There was nothing to do or see outside of the old city, so I had to constantly call Uber rides to do anything, and each ride would cost me around 4 USD. Without considering the location, I managed to settle into a decent guesthouse with an incredible English-speaking host. I had my room while sharing the living area/bathroom with others. The bathroom however did not have hot water or a shower head, so it was essentially a tube that leaked cold water on command.
In the end — I did not enjoy my stay in Cartagena at all. There are fewer cities in the world I can say I dislike so passionately, but that’s a story for another day.
