> The company says the cancellation was approved under its standard policy permitting properties to void bookings in "rare cases where a property identifies a clear rate error." Following Go Public's questions, Booking.com told Mann it would honour her original booking and cover the price difference — allowing her to keep the same four bedroom unit at no additional cost.
Sounds like booking.com made a mistake in applying the wrong policy, and is trying to cover up for it instead of admitting their liability.
Let's take a look at incentives. Booking.com has an incentive to cancel. The hotel itself has an incentive to cancel. The laws in place don't prevent this, especially when some contractual fine print is involved.
Will this public case result in flood of people away from booking.com? Probably not.
This is just a simple abuse of power, most easily identified by the question: "What are you going to do about it?"
It seems the play is to tell the world. Congrats to this lady for getting her money/booking back.
> When Mann booked the accommodations, Formula One organizers hadn't locked in the exact race dates. So she covered her bases — reserving the same four-bedroom unit for two possible weekends in May 2026, both with free cancellation.
> Once the official dates were announced, she cancelled the extra booking, in line with Booking.com rules.
Let's be real here. Booking.com is not the only side stretching the terms of service to the limit to extract maximum value. This speculative booking and cancellation also drives costs up for other consumers who book reservations with honest intent by pulling a bunch of units off the market. It's hard to blame Booking.com for wanting to stick it to her.
I know it's not a popular opinion but at this point I think anyone who books through a 3rd party basically gets what they deserve. There are no end to horror stories here and with the modern internet there's no reason to use them. In 2002 it was a different story. It may not have prevented this situation but the 3rd party bookers take a cut from the provider and offer you absolutely nothing in return. Just book direct.
Just to add to the dynamic for those too busy to read:
> When Mann booked the accommodations, Formula One organizers hadn't locked in the exact race dates. So she covered her bases — reserving the same four-bedroom unit for two possible weekends in May 2026, both with free cancellation.
> Once the official dates were announced, she cancelled the extra booking, in line with Booking.com rules.
I wonder if this changes our perception of things. If you book two dates and then cancel, are you not also part of the problem?
Perhaps if you didn't go for the free cancellation, then it should be a fair two way lock in, if you commit, we'll commit etc. Still not as bad as when Jason Manford finished a show, turned up at the Village Hotel in Bournemouth, and because he checked in late, they'd given his room to someone else.
"When Mann booked the accommodations, Formula One organizers hadn't locked in the exact race dates. So she covered her bases — reserving the same four-bedroom unit for two possible weekends in May 2026, both with free cancellation.
Once the official dates were announced, she cancelled the extra booking, in line with Booking.com rules."
And then Booking.com cancelled her booking, in line with Booking.com rules. Shit goes both ways.
It's simple. Booking.com will fuck you over and have all sorts of fine print to cover themselves. However I can simply recommend if they do something like cancel a confirmed booking don't bother contacting customer support. Simply get on Facebook and start swearing and causing a huge fuss till they sort it out. They will tell you 100 times that they are very sorry and they would love to help but they just can't and they feel horrible about it all but "the policy" forbids them doing anything that could smell like genuine customer service. Simply raise the temperature of agitation just as this customer did and eventually booking.com will buckle.
I had exactly the same case. I had a non cancellable room booked for an event and a week or two before the event it was cancelled and booking tried to claim they were not an agent, they were not part of the contract, that they cared very deeply. Customer support in English cost 1€ per minute and they kept putting me on hold. Eventually I just went to Facebook and asked GPT to start incrementally generating more and more offensive posts direct at their social media account. It's much cheaper than their customer support line and it actually reaches someone who can do something.
I don’t know why everyone is saying you shouldn’t use booking.com. The story is that the person booked two weekends and canceled one. The hotel canceled the other and upcharged. Then booking.com paid the $13k difference? I don’t know. This makes it more likely I’ll use booking.com. If they booked directly with the hotel they would just lose the room.
With booking.com they’re big enough that making a fuss in the media gets you a $17k room for $4k. I’m taking that deal every single time haha.
My booking.com latest experience: booked big appartment for 4 people. Arrived to destination (Bristol, UK), and apartment already had guests inside. Tried contacting landlord, no reply. Called booking com, they offered acommodation 30km from the city centre, and its already 11pm, no way to get there. Had to pay our own hotels, and we never got money paid to booking.
One neighbor of that apartment said they often double book! Seems booking com doesn't care.
I have found that it's always better to book directly with hotels. The price is the same or better, but more importantly, it's waaaay easier to make changes or cancellations without the middleman.
And rentalcars.com is a flat-out scam. I had to dispute CC charges with them when I showed up on scene, there were no cars, and rentalcars wouldn't refund it. Always book with the rental company directly.
This is how the hotel industry works. This isn't just a booking or expedia thing. If the hotel knows they're gonna sell the house they'll shit-can "cheap" reservations that were made a long time ago. Even if Booking.com or whatever middleman online travel agency you're using doesn't facilitate this, the hotel itself will do it.
Every time there's a big event somewhere a bunch of people who booked before the event was publicized get bit by this.
Travel industry especially OTA behemoths like booking or expedia live by exploiting all possible quirks of the systems. For example they could snap super cheap airline promo fares but manipulate it to keep it in an open state for months similarly to how agents wait till the payment clears. Would be than sold with massive profit or abandoned close to flight date without any penalties. Apparently they rotted enough for start blatantly cancelling hotel bookings.
I've been making reservations recently and I think there is a huge imbalance in power.
All bookings in popular places or on popular dates are NON REFUNDABLE. As in "click and you will never see any of this money again" non-refundable. Very non-refundable. If I have to cancel, I lose all my money.
At the same time, hotels can cancel for little or no cost. They do not lose money.
I don't know what the right solution is, but I have a feeling this should be regulated at least a little bit (EU, take notice): I'd say totally non-refundable bookings should not exist. You should always be able to get at least some of your money back before the date the service starts. And if the other side cancels, they should pay a penalty, at least the same as the penalty I have to incur, possibly more to prevent schemes like the one described above.
> All bookings in popular places or on popular dates are NON REFUNDABLE. As in "click and you will never see any of this money again" non-refundable. Very non-refundable. If I have to cancel, I lose all my money.
The Atlantic recently wrote on how hotel policies have changed, with many no longer allowing free cancellations.
TL;DR: Hotel aggregators (e.g. Booking.com, Expedia) adopted a "cancel-rebook" strategy, where the aggregators would monitor hotel prices & rebook if the price dropped.
Don’t you think hotels aren’t already regulated? Just try opening a new one in a popular place and let us know how open the market is.
Repeat after me: regulations (no matter how good or well intended) favor the incumbents and hinder startups. Fewer startups means less competition. Less competition means fewer, crappier and more expensive products and services.
Trying to use more regulation to fix a market f’ed up by regulation will only deepen this spiral of doom.
The price search is great, booking not so much. I've been burned twice on bookings and I think I've used it four or five times. It's sad and ridiculous.
By burned, I mean not getting the room I paid for. At this point, I'll use it to search then just go to the hotel site directly to book.
Just recently had an issues with Booking.com. I made hotel and rental reservations through them for an event I went to. My car rental was for 11:00am, but my flight was delayed and I got to the car rental (Sixt) at 7:00pm. Sixt gave my car away and were sold out. Because I went through a third party, their policy is to reserve the car for an hour past the reserved time. Mind you, I prepaid for the car in full. I contacted Booking, and they said I had to wait until after the reservation return date to open a ticket for a refund. I did that, then they said I waited too long and they couldn’t confirm that my car was unavailable. I tried to escalate, they said our decision is final and the ticket is closed. They haven’t responded since.
I vowed to never book at booking. They use dark patterns and are therefore a parasite. I really wish them to go bankrupt with all the responsible ones going too. I really don't understand they we as a so called caring society accept behavior of these kind of companies.
My ultimate trump card for all these reservation systems is my wife. She understands every single aspect of every single reservation system and rewards program that I almost feel like we’re ripping off airlines, hotels, car rental etc every time we travel.
I once booked what I thought was a hotel room via Booking.com but when I arrived it was a “serviced apartment” in a residential complex - so an Airbnb basically. But the way it was presented on the platform made it really difficult to tell it wasn’t a hotel.
Only problem was when I arrived there was already someone in it and they weren’t leaving.
At first Booking.com told me it was my problem and they would refund me and I could book somewhere else. But to get the refund I needed to prove that I couldn’t get in (how? They weren’t clear) and then book somewhere else and then send them all the details and they would “consider my request”.
I wasn’t doing that. No chance. And apart from anything else there were no hotel rooms available because there was a big conference going on. The nearest available rooms were about 30 miles away.
In the end - after an hour or so on the phone with an escalating series of people one of them (I think to get rid of me) stupidly said “if we could find ANY hotel room in town we would book it for you like a shot - but there are none”.
“Ah ha!” I said. “There is a hotel room - but it’s a suite in the Hyatt Regency - and it’s £2100 for the night. I bet you won’t book that!”
Amazingly, they did. The suite was larger than my flat.
And a complete waste because I only needed it for that night and was checking out at 6am. Though it did include a bar and restaurant credit worth nearly as much as the original “room” I’d booked.
They are a completely chaotic company. And after that I never used them again.
32 comments
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 56.4 ms ] threadSounds like booking.com made a mistake in applying the wrong policy, and is trying to cover up for it instead of admitting their liability.
Will this public case result in flood of people away from booking.com? Probably not.
This is just a simple abuse of power, most easily identified by the question: "What are you going to do about it?"
It seems the play is to tell the world. Congrats to this lady for getting her money/booking back.
I had this on Airbnb.
> Once the official dates were announced, she cancelled the extra booking, in line with Booking.com rules.
Let's be real here. Booking.com is not the only side stretching the terms of service to the limit to extract maximum value. This speculative booking and cancellation also drives costs up for other consumers who book reservations with honest intent by pulling a bunch of units off the market. It's hard to blame Booking.com for wanting to stick it to her.
Unfortunately, there are some smaller BnBs that only take booking.com
Although, this article reminds me of people on slickdeals complaining that they got caught trying to buy a type-o.
> When Mann booked the accommodations, Formula One organizers hadn't locked in the exact race dates. So she covered her bases — reserving the same four-bedroom unit for two possible weekends in May 2026, both with free cancellation.
> Once the official dates were announced, she cancelled the extra booking, in line with Booking.com rules.
I wonder if this changes our perception of things. If you book two dates and then cancel, are you not also part of the problem?
Perhaps if you didn't go for the free cancellation, then it should be a fair two way lock in, if you commit, we'll commit etc. Still not as bad as when Jason Manford finished a show, turned up at the Village Hotel in Bournemouth, and because he checked in late, they'd given his room to someone else.
Once the official dates were announced, she cancelled the extra booking, in line with Booking.com rules."
And then Booking.com cancelled her booking, in line with Booking.com rules. Shit goes both ways.
I had exactly the same case. I had a non cancellable room booked for an event and a week or two before the event it was cancelled and booking tried to claim they were not an agent, they were not part of the contract, that they cared very deeply. Customer support in English cost 1€ per minute and they kept putting me on hold. Eventually I just went to Facebook and asked GPT to start incrementally generating more and more offensive posts direct at their social media account. It's much cheaper than their customer support line and it actually reaches someone who can do something.
With booking.com they’re big enough that making a fuss in the media gets you a $17k room for $4k. I’m taking that deal every single time haha.
And rentalcars.com is a flat-out scam. I had to dispute CC charges with them when I showed up on scene, there were no cars, and rentalcars wouldn't refund it. Always book with the rental company directly.
Every time there's a big event somewhere a bunch of people who booked before the event was publicized get bit by this.
All bookings in popular places or on popular dates are NON REFUNDABLE. As in "click and you will never see any of this money again" non-refundable. Very non-refundable. If I have to cancel, I lose all my money.
At the same time, hotels can cancel for little or no cost. They do not lose money.
I don't know what the right solution is, but I have a feeling this should be regulated at least a little bit (EU, take notice): I'd say totally non-refundable bookings should not exist. You should always be able to get at least some of your money back before the date the service starts. And if the other side cancels, they should pay a penalty, at least the same as the penalty I have to incur, possibly more to prevent schemes like the one described above.
The Atlantic recently wrote on how hotel policies have changed, with many no longer allowing free cancellations.
Why Hotel-Room Cancellations Disappeared
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2025/11/hotel-room-ca...
TL;DR: Hotel aggregators (e.g. Booking.com, Expedia) adopted a "cancel-rebook" strategy, where the aggregators would monitor hotel prices & rebook if the price dropped.
Don’t you think hotels aren’t already regulated? Just try opening a new one in a popular place and let us know how open the market is.
Repeat after me: regulations (no matter how good or well intended) favor the incumbents and hinder startups. Fewer startups means less competition. Less competition means fewer, crappier and more expensive products and services.
Trying to use more regulation to fix a market f’ed up by regulation will only deepen this spiral of doom.
By burned, I mean not getting the room I paid for. At this point, I'll use it to search then just go to the hotel site directly to book.
Only problem was when I arrived there was already someone in it and they weren’t leaving.
At first Booking.com told me it was my problem and they would refund me and I could book somewhere else. But to get the refund I needed to prove that I couldn’t get in (how? They weren’t clear) and then book somewhere else and then send them all the details and they would “consider my request”.
I wasn’t doing that. No chance. And apart from anything else there were no hotel rooms available because there was a big conference going on. The nearest available rooms were about 30 miles away.
In the end - after an hour or so on the phone with an escalating series of people one of them (I think to get rid of me) stupidly said “if we could find ANY hotel room in town we would book it for you like a shot - but there are none”.
“Ah ha!” I said. “There is a hotel room - but it’s a suite in the Hyatt Regency - and it’s £2100 for the night. I bet you won’t book that!”
Amazingly, they did. The suite was larger than my flat.
And a complete waste because I only needed it for that night and was checking out at 6am. Though it did include a bar and restaurant credit worth nearly as much as the original “room” I’d booked.
They are a completely chaotic company. And after that I never used them again.