Hey everyone,
I had an experience today that I wanted to share and get ideas on.
I made a hotel reservation for my boss with what looked like a legit booking website. It was the first one to come up after the sponsored posts. The actual hotel doesn't let you book directly through them.
It was meant to be a two bedroom suite for two people, but after reserving it appeared to be two separate suites. My fault, I should've noticed the price difference from how much I knew the room should've been. I contacted the hotel front desk and the concierge said she could see the reservation and that I had to contact the booking website directly to change it. There wasn't a phone number so red flags immediately came up. There was a way to send a message so I sent a few but had no idea when I would hear back. So, I Googled and found a phone number that was of course out of service. I scrolled down and saw three posts in this subreddit saying the website is a scam.
Immediately I contacted my boss's credit card company and the lady told me we can't dispute the charge until it's finalized. However she told me that from her end she could see the charge came from hotelplanner.com and that they did have a phone number. This website looked a lot more legit so I worried a bit less but still told the credit card company to dispute it as soon as it finalized. I went back to the original reservation and simply hit cancel reservation and I immediately got an email saying the reservation had been cancelled and he could expect a refund in 3-7 days.
The only thing making me feel better about this situation is that the actual hotel concierge could see the reservation through her end.
Does anyone have any experience with bookonline.com or have any advice?