Booking.com Reviews 196

On October 3, 2024, I was scheduled to fly under a flight booked with Booking.comz However, while on board the flight, it was abruptly canceled. I was offered a new flight departing on October 6, 2024. Due to personal commitments, including the need to travel home to care for my children, I declined this rebooking and requested a full refund through Booking.com.

Since then, I have contacted your customer service team numerous times, yet two months later, my refund has not been processed. Last week, I was promised a response from a manager, but I have yet to receive any communication.

Relevant Regulations and Rights

As per the International Air Transport Association (IATA) guidelines and the Montreal Convention, passengers are entitled to a full refund if a flight is canceled and the alternative offered is unsuitable for their travel needs. Additionally, under EU Regulation 261/2004, which governs air passenger rights within Europe:

Article 8(1)(a): Passengers are entitled to a refund within seven days in the case of a cancellation if they do not accept the alternative travel arrangement.

Article 9: Passengers are entitled to care, which includes assistance and prompt resolutions.

Booking.com, as the intermediary, has a duty of care to ensure that customers receive timely refunds and clear communication but blatantly ignores that

This is quite possibly the worst platform as a host, it is a nightmare to log in and will log you out randomly. It is a constant headache trying to get in contact with guests! It's also extremely unhelpful when you try to charge a guest for any extra services. My advice use air BnB or literally any other platform!!!!!!

Of all the platforms this is the worse. They offer nothing to hosts. Pretend we are partners and they are sorry for your experience then they do nothing. They are all about the commission
Their platform is overly complicated too and designed in my opinion to con the host I’m not having a clue how much money the stay is worth to them.
There should be a body to take these guys on. They earn a fortune and give nothing back

Well. Where do we start....
This company, do not give one toss for their so called 'Partners', I think that made up word is as much as real as a two horned unicorn.
Time and time again, they let idiots with a 1st grade education decide who does, and does not get their money back, despite knowing that people, not for the most part, are genuine scammers, and lie at the drop of a hat. 4 times this year, idiots have tried to stay, sometimes for a week, then tell TALL tales about their mother/boyfriend, insert your dead partner here, then this shower give them back their money, and we spend the next 2 weeks fighting them. For the most part, the line gets dropped/not answered/ignored etc, etc, and the head shed actually have the balls to ask us for feedback lol! Really, they are supposed to be the top company for rentals? Methinks they will, as is happening to Ticketmaster and such will see their empire crumble. They are only in it for the money, and we as decent, honest owners, cannot even get a bad review, despite overwhelming witness statements, revoked. I genuinely believe this company has the chance to be the best in the world but, just as people thought Russia was a great and mighty power, they are somewhere behind your local campsite. Dark, dank, and served by the local dimwits. A very sad state of affairs, and this can be attested by the complete lack of replies and answers by said company.....

Absolutely disgraceful service. My account locks out every time I try to login and customer service can never help. I spend an hour waiting to speak to someone and they hang up on me deliberately as they can't be bothered to handle. DISGRACEFUL!!!!

I was new extranet user till booking.com disabled my account due to property not qualified. This is just a shame that such property cant pass verification process and due to this they just closed down my account. I even got my property booked but they dont care customer.
Worse experience with booking come, it is about 4 month I am with airbnb and got 4 guests and all are happy with us.

Why is zero stars not possible?? It's the worst service for hosts ever. I bought a property in July 2024 and tried to list it on Bookinng.com but failed. Initially, they blocked my account for security reasons and never unblocked it; then, I created a new account and was able to have three guests, but they closed my property because it was duplicated, and I had to use the original one with the blocked account. They finally allowed me to access my original account. I can't list my property because a similar property is on sale in a random real estate portal. We can't ask all the agencies to update their listings. It's ridiculous; I've been working with Airbnb since day one without any issues. Just go with them.

It’s the worst platform for hosts.
I tried to use their service for automatic payments. So I had two reservations. Booking issued VCC CARDS for me THAT NO WORK . They took my fees also(separately ).
When I call to support they said me - we will check what we can do and no help . If I send them letters only one answer - cards work perfectly, Try to ask help from your POS service.
So they don’t want take their cards back and pay me this money straight to my bank account )
But in 12 month they will take their cards back!! And hold this money. As they warned me about it. But now no way to give me my payment .

They keeps my reservations money ,they already stole my fees money
And in 9 month they grab officially reservations money
Never use automatic payments with them .

Booking.com don't recognise one of the biggest Wales resorts which is Towyn. Said not possible to put on geographically. So no listings come up for it when searching. What nonsense, get your act together Booking.com and instead of wasting time of hosts just put it on the map!! It's real in case you don't know and thousands of visitors come every year.

substitution of ownership on a property led to no access to their extranet where you find: guest names, contact into, payment info etc. Failing to have access to such means no access to this required information plus no adjustment as to # of rooms available and pricing. Incredibly difficult to deal with, disputing commission statements (which we had no access too) means no one to call, no one to email, just threatening emails.

Terrible experience out of town for an emergency booked online. We got to the hotel they had no electricity called booking.com to.get a new room or money back amd received no help they kept my money and we had no place to stay.

I'm a host for more than 6 years with a rating of 9,3
Now I have a second case for a double booking pending.
Reservation 4689782188
A partly overbooking issue that occurred with a reservation made through an instant reservation of booking's own services, over which I had and have no control whatsoever. Booking's reservation software should have designed in such a way that the double booking THROUGH THEIR OWN SYSTEM is impossible. But it happened now for the second because. I decline to cover any commissions or any charges regarding this issue. In fact I hold booking.com liable to cover for the total loss of revenue regarding this specific issue to the amout of 692,60 €.

Here is the proof:
booking number 4689782188 from 3.8.2024 to 13.8.2024 received 24.5.2024
booking number 4790506703 from 12.8.2024 to 19.8.2024
received 21.7.2024

You may easily see that the day 12.8.2024 is the problem. This day overlaps the 2 referenced bookings. When I received the reservation 4790506703, I called the booking service line immediately and asked how is it possible that a guest is able to book a period which has been previously booked by another guest months ago? Bearing in mind that ALL our reservations come in automatically, directly from booking's services. So it is obvious that this doublebooking has been created by their own booking system which is completley out of my control. The help line tried hard but could not explain me how or why it happened as the day 12.8.2024 has been already booked since 24.5.2024 and they promised to contact the guest 4689782188 to relocate them. I DID NOT CANCEL THIS BOOKING. Booking's services did it in an attempt to clean up the mess caused by their own reservation system which obviously failed to "see" that there is 1 single "common" night including in 2 different reservation periods of 2 different guests. And now I should pay for that? It's a joke? In case they don't drop the invoice nr. 161888977 immediately and apologize for all the hours of hazzle their company caused me, I shall terminate completely the partnership.

First I thought: "fecal matter happens to all companies, but twice the same story within a couple months? Strange!" Today I read a review here on Trustpilot written by Bill on 20.August.2024 with the title: "Screwed by Booking.com". Now I've learned that my case is not a single freak case, but a company workplace unethical behavior, one may call it blatant fraud in simple words.

They invoiced me commission fees for a non existant booking. For 2 cases during the last 3 months I lost more than 1000 Euros on rent income plus commission expenses.

So I blocked the calendar for the time being until 31.12.2024. If this case is not resolved to my entire satisfaction, I'll terminate all business with this company. Needless to say that I invested already more than 10 hours on phone calls and correspondance with a myriad of so called customer service officers to clear the matter. IN VAIN. They do so as if such cases of double bookings do not exist, can't tell me why it happens, but will "investigate". Their investigations resulted in issuing invoices they deduct from my rental income without my consent. This can happen also to you if you hosting through Booking. So think about it. Twice!

That's right, the long list of 1 star ratings don't lie, booking.com extranet is a joke. Even the simplest tasks of getting additional information about a reservation or making changes is impossible. They have this strange verification policy where no matter what the question is, they need to "Call you back" to verify it's you. Long story short, they'll never call you back. It's happened to me dozens of times where I urgently needed assistance with a reservation and they just never call back.

So, if you can't get your question answered because you're not verified, and they never call you back, you're left high and dry regardless of the issue and how urgent it is.

I understand that businesses outsource their call centres to cut costs, but with an average of 1 star rating, surely there's someone smart enough in an organisation this large to understand that there's something wrong. Or maybe they're happy with the low quality of service.

Total ripoff. DO NOT USE this company!! Especially to book hotel rooms. They will disguise themselves to appear like the host hotel and then charge you fully for the room AND then not allow you to cancel. Even 2+ days prior to arrival. No way to connect with a human to talk to. And very hefty fees tagged on. Be aware. Hotels should do everything they can to put these crooks out of business.

Terrible terrible terrible. Countless support requests raised and only standard template responses and issue never resolved. I’ve been trying to get money back for a guest who booking.com took payment from but have not paid me. Can I get it repaid can I fk!

Like all modern companies, take the money and no support for the fees they take.

Everything is fine, until you have to deal with them. We had a guest who requested a special bed arrangement. He apparently went to the wrong address and decided that he was not going to stay there. The only message that we got was "We're not staying there." 15 minutes after he said he was on his way. He later asked for a full refund, again with no reason for not showing up. As we had set up the room according to his wishes, and turned away other guests who were looking for accommodation on that day, we refused the refund request. Apparently, in retaliation, he left a 1-star review with no comment. At booking.com, if a review has no comment, the host may not reply to the review. We requested that Booking.com remove the review. How could the guest possibly be allowed to leave a 1-star review for cleanliness, facilities and comfort when he was marked as a no-show?

Booking.com responded with:

Dear Partner,

Thanks for your request. We’ve taken another look at the review in question and have decided not to remove it because the comments don’t go against our policies. The review in question will remain online because it meets our guiding principles of being:

Appropriate for a global audience
Travel related
Genuine and unique
Respectful of others’ privacy

Instead, we’d advise you to reply to this review (if the guest has commented). That way, you can express your point of view fairly and clarify the situation for future guests. Thanks for your understanding.

Best regards,
Booking.com Moderation Team

Clearly, no one actually looked at the situation. They should have easily seen that the guest left no comment and that thus their suggestion to reply to the review was irrelevant. For the 15% commission that they charge the host, you would think they might actually do something to earn it. Apparently not.

As long as you are good with a 15% commission, and nothing goes wrong, you are probably OK. But, if there are any problems, you are on your own. Partner? Seriously?

I am a host with a 9.5 rating on booking.com and have been with them since 2018. Get lots of referrals, but periodically, their web-site double books over their own bookings (this is not a problem of coordinating with other platforms). Invariably, booking.com places 100% of the blame on the host (me and my wife) and accepts NO blame for their web-site malfunction. They then re-locate the guest, invariably in a more expensive accommodation, and charge us the difference (deducting it from monies they owe us). Have tried to correspond directly with head office on this issue, but have never received a reply. It has been useless and futile dealing with their telephone "executives" on this issue (once you get through to them, and if you don't get cut off mid-call). Yes, I am pretty pissed off.

Terrible support for hosts, zero help from the team, only issues even in emergency situations?’bb

Property owners stay away from working with the booking.com platform.
They keep your money until the guests check out. Other platforms don't do that!!
They sugar-coat the numbers then eventually if they pay you, you don't get what you thought you were getting.
I joined two weeks ago and it has been a nightmare to work with.
I have cancelled all my contracts and want nothing to do with them.
Please use the other platforms they are amazing!

If there was a minus star review, Booking.com customer service would win it. Totally useless staff, with no power or desire to do anything ! They kept saying that we need to speak to the Hotel directly and the Hotel will implement their own policies ! So, what are we paying Booking.com a commission for ? My new policy is NOT to use them. I stopped my account of 8 years, and more than 300 bookings with them. People need to unite and boycott them !

I'm sure their reply to these negative comments is: " We are sorry to hear that ..... " another useless gesture !!!!