Bookabach Reviews 101

I've never used Bachcare until now, I booked my accommodation over 2 weeks ago, and paid for it. I received an email from this service to advise that the owner pulled out. I phoned to get a refund and now they are stalling to refund my money back. CONSUMER BEWARE DO NOT USE BACHCARE!! It's not deserving of any stars!!

huge cut, terribly policies eg; no refunds and huge cancellation fees. don't recommend at all

Great experience at a beautiful spacious home. Very generous hospitable host Jan. Close to city and shopping, Food. Relaxed warm vibe in the home. Heat pump for the crisp night. Loved it. 5/5
Nga mihi and many more happy blessings to the owners.

We booked a bach in pakawau tasman on the 27/12/22 for 10 people got an email to confirm booking then 12/3/23 recieved an email from the host saying we can only have 8 people despite the original post that said 10 guests maximum, due to her having last minute surgery she didn't have time to update she then goes on to say she doesn't mind us pitching a tent to accommodate only to fully cancel our booking the very next day 13/3/23 saying she is uncomfortable with large groups as previous groups havent been very respectful. Rang book a bach only to be told basically that the owner/host can do as she pleases with no repercussions. Had trouble writing a review directly on this hosts property as everytime it would direct me to the help section which ironically was no help at all. Hence why I am here to let you all know not to book anything with book a bach and in particular kris hemlein.

see vrbo review. location not revealed until full payment and no refund. description not reality once location revealed. No refund cancel cause of covid few years back. same ethos, don't touch with a barge pole.

Absolutely do not use Bookabach or this booking. We reserved this place a year and a half ago and never received confirmation of the booking. Up until the host sent us the secondary payment option about a year and three months later. Upon explaining the situation she lied to us on the phone and is now demanding we pay the rest due to their cancelation policy. To make it even better Bookabach will take no responsibility. To make it even better if you book on Airbnb she'll refund any cancellations up until five days out. Absolutely feel like I was scammed by both the host and this party as they take my money to the bank for a service I didn't even know we had for a year. Do not use

Just left a book-a-bach property 2 weeks early as it was completely unfit accommodation.
Have given up trying to contact them for a refund as they have made the process impossible. They obviously don't inspect the properties that they are renting and we're about $3000 out of pocket.
My previous booking with them was also a disaster when they tried to charge $315 per night instead of the $135 per night quotation
AVOID AT ALL COSTS

DO NOT RECOMMEND USING BOOKABACH - Our trip was cancelled due to a force de majeure - Cyclone Gabrielle. Official advice from Civil Defense was not to travel, plus our flights were cancelled & credited by Air NZ. Bookabach basically washed their hands of any responsibility, saying it was between me and the host to sort out between us (despite my contract being with Bookabach) - Not surprising considering Bookabach had taken full payment for the accommodation at the time of the booking but the host does not actually get the money until the traveller arrives which I did not realise until today. Extremely disappointed with Bookabach and their useless Customer Service, feel sorry for the host and I will never use Bookabach again or recommend them to anyone. How companies treat their customers in times of crises defines them, and unfortunately Bookabach fell well short when it mattered.

We placed a booking request through Bookabach in approximately Mar 2022 for a Jan 2023 stay. After not hearing back about our request for a week or so we found an alternative place to stay.

Since Bookabach were offering free cancellation prior to a certain date, we then tried to cancel our booking request with them. Given the request hadn't been accepted and was still showing as 'pending' on their system, there was no way on their site for us to cancel. So we called their 'international' helpdesk.

They were anything but helpful. They are now apparently owned by VRBO by the way. So VRBO told us we would need to contact the accommodation provider directly as they "couldn't cancel a pending booking - only the accom provider could do that".

So we called the accom provider. They had not received any request from Bookabach/VRBO for a booking. So they couldn't cancel anything.

We called Bookaback/VRBO back. Yet again they were extremely unhelpful and said they couldn't do anything about it.

So we left it there.

About a week before what would have been our actual holiday date, we received an email from Bookabach telling us they hoped we were all set for our upcoming stay?! Again we called Bookaback/VRBO and again they said it was nothing to do with them - it was between us and the accom provider?!!

Worried that we were about to be charged for a holiday we had tried to cancel 9 months prior, we contacted the accom provider again. Again they said they had nothing on their system from us!

Another call to Bookaback/VRBO was met with the same useless customer service - saying it was nothing to do with them - even though the entire issue was caused by their booking system.

Thankfully our credit card wasn't charged but I did receive a request for feedback from them today asking how our stay was...

Please do NOT ever book with Bookaback/VRBO

I would give Bookabach MINUS 5 stars, absolutely shocking company to deal with. Bookabach don't act in good faith, hold your money for "fraud reasons and necessary checks" which is absolute rubbish, no other company does this...I would say Bookabach are the fraudsters instead. Good luck getting in contact with Bookabach, they hang up on you when you call, they just end virtual chats while you are still asking questions and navigating their website is a dog! Bookabach hide information from hosts and make it a nightmare to unlist with them.
Worst experience ever and their fees are the highest!
BE AWARE AND STAY AWAY FROM BOOKABACH!!!

Private studio near the sea-1 minute walk to the beach in Raumati South, run by Chris and Kim Lund.

The tiniest, darkest, nastiest cold concrete bunker someone ever tried to pass off as a "studio". My tiny Nissan Tiida hatch barely fit in their carpark. My husband hit his head going in the gate, the entrance is so low, and again on the door on the way in. This place is made for hobbits, not humans. You are almost in the tiny shower box when sitting on the toilet. The bed is a supposed "double", but 2 average people would have trouble lying side-by-side on it; more like a king single. And you could just squeeze down the side of the bed, if you are an average height 60kg person you have to turn sideways to walk to the bedside unit. There was definite HOLE in the wall of the bedroom, not the skylight, not the window - an actual hole to the outside in the wall!
Oh, and to top if off, they LIE Blatantly in their ad and in their replies to reviews. According to them, my Nissan Tiida hatch is an SUV? (Not) And according to them, we were in the unit 5 mins... try 3 hours of freezing our buts off on a windy Wellington day. When closed the doors let the wind right through, it was a freezing COLD concrete bunker. We'd had enough and went home to get warm.

Rubbish site. No response from question. Got to be the worst booking attempt ever

We stayed at Topdeck in Te Puke on Pukehina Beach.
Place was dirty. Bbq rusty. Couldn't find lockbox. Took owners 2hrs to reply. Pillows were smelly. Crumbs in drawers. Freezer didn't work.
Not as advertised

Cunning, careless, thieves!!!

They deceive you with a calm welcoming atmosphere on the main page of their website, then they lure you into paying before confirming available dates.

They deceive you with these tactics and then you may attempt to cancel (as the dates that you need turn out to be unavailable) not only is the process to cancel not obvious, its complicated and they lie about there attempts to refund you.

Good luck getting a refund from Bookabach!.

Of all accommodation websites, Book-a-Bach (a Texas-based Expedia subsidiary with a global reach) is the LEAST accommodating. Their website is ridiculously clunky and user-unfriendly, as described by MrsHowty and many others here. Especially when compared to the excellent Airbnb, Agoda, Booking.com sites. AVOID Book-a-Bach.

DO NOT USE THIS SITE! They have no simple
CANCEL BOOKING button or an easy way to CHANGE BOOKING. They do not advise you up-front of availability. Basic stuff like that. These Texas cowboys are just out to make money, not to provide the service which you (and the host) pay for. They let down both hosts and travellers.

We have'nt even stayed yet but our apartment we booked in the gold coast has been hugely downgraded with no compensation. 4 single beds are now 2 doubles and what was 2 balconies large kitchen and large breakfast bar is now a small kitchenette, We cant rebook elsewhere as all accomodation already fully booked , Will never use this cowboy outfit again dusgusting customer service and we have been taken advantage of. I strongly advise Go elsewhere these guys are con artists and will resell your room at a higher rate and downgrade you to earn more money

This was the first time I'd booked using this platform, and will be the last. This has to be the most clunky, archaic booking platform ever!

Deposit paid OK, then when it came time to pay the balance a few months later, a random email from a company called booking sync telling me they had emailed me days earlier (they hadn't) with absolutely no reference to book a bach on it. Infact it referenced booking sync and stay here, both of which I had never heard of. Scam alert big time. I emailed the place where we were staying questioning the email, and the comment was, oh, that happens a lot (about people questioning the dodgy unbranded email), and gave me an alternative way to pay. Each time I got an email from Bookabach, you just can't hit reply without logging in, painful. C'mon guys, it's 2022 not 1972, tech should be easy to navigate and not be so clunky and backward.

Their customer service is a dreadful. I made a simple change from 3 nights one weekend to 2 nights the following weekend at the same property. They have overcharged me and overcharged the property owner. She has called them so many times and each time gets a different person none of whom actually have the ability to sort it out. I have tried calling them too and they keep saying I must talk to the owner. But they have overcharged me and it is very clear exactly where they have overcharged me. They clearly have no intention of actually sorting this issue out. I will never use them again and I really advise that no one else does either.

Highly recommend that you reconsider using Bookabach. I just returned to NZ and usually book places via Airbnb. My friend told me about bookabach so I signed up. The host didnt allow me to stay as I didnt have any previous bookings. This is fine but my booking was left in pending status. I called Bookabach to cancel my order as I need to find a new place on Airbnb. They told me that they do not manage the booking and my payment details have been sent to a third party which my host uses.

Highly unprofessional and not a secure way to deal with payment information! BEWARE

I booked a property for three days today and paid by credit card which was the requirement to book. No address was supplied regarding the property although I received confirmation from Bookabach that the reservation was confirmed. We contacted the owner and were told the property was already booked and that we should cancel the booking. However, the cancellation policy was that we would lose 50% of the payment if we cancelled. So I contacted Bookabach who turned out to be a company called Vrbo and the operator was very cavalier. Eventually said we would get our money back in five to seven working days. However, the same property is still advertised as being available on those dates at the same price, so I'm wondering how many people have perhaps booked it. Vrbo said the owner hadn't had a chance to amend his calendar and yet it was shown as booked after I had booked it.