Booking.com: Hotel requested that I cancel.Booking rep said new hotel same price

[FIREin2018]

This is a house that's been subdivided.
I booked for 1 night.
Hotels emails me (via booking.com messaging) that they have someone who wants to stay 3 nights and would like me to cancel.

I call up booking.com. I said i want to stay there. She said she can't make the hotel accept me if they don't want me. :(
She said the computer will find me an equivalent place and if it's more expensive, I'll be refunded the difference in price.

The hotel initiates a cancel. I can wait 24hrs for auto-cancel or I can click on the link to cancel. I was expecting an easy cancel when i pressed on the link. NOPE!
It goes to booking.com's generic customer service screen where one of the options is to cancel.
I select that and it looks like i'm INITIATING the cancel instead of the hotel.

Screw that. I'll wait.
I'll update tomorrow

[Sibley]

Well, I would certainly be leaving a review on that hotel.

[FIREin2018]

So 36hrs after I received the cancel request from my hotel, my reservation got canceled even though the email said 24hrs.

And booking.com sent me a link for a similar property in a similar location.
It actually looks like a very nice newly remodeled subdivided house and only $10 more.
I would have missed it because I put down 8/10 rating as minimum and that property being brand new has no rating.
It said after I book to send them my new confirmation # presumably to refund the difference.

In the future if this happens again, I'll ask Booking.com if I cancel (and save 36hrs of worry), can i book something similar and send them the rsvp for them to refund the difference instead of waiting for their link?

Fortunately because of this mess, i started looking at the nearby casino hotel every few hrs to see if anyone canceled so i can get a free room. (It's full because holiday weekend.)
And i got one yesterday! So that's the bright side of this.

[rantk81]

The whole point of using one of those third-party search/aggregators (like bookings, orbitz, priceline, etc), is to make the experience easier.  Sounds like the service you used made it more inconvenient when needing to re-book a new place.  Maybe next time choose a different third-party site, or, try booking directly with a hotel.  In any case, after the poor service (that is, mostly keeping you wondering/anxious about it without a definitive resolution within specified time-frame), I would not be using that site anymore.

[nessness]

I once booked a resort through Booking.com. Two days before my stay, there was a major storm in the town where the resort was, causing half the town to have to evacuate due to flooding. The main highway to get to that town was completely washed out. I called the resort to cancel, but they refused to waive the late cancelation fee, which was like 50% of the stay. I then complained to Booking.com, who said it was at the resort's discretion and there was nothing they could do.

Fortunately I was able to dispute the charge with my credit card company, but I won't use Booking.com again.

[crocheted_stache]

General advice, both read/heard and experienced: book directly with the hotel if possible. If you use a third-party site, use it as a search engine, not a booking service. That is, find the place, then go directly to the hotel website or call for the reservation. 

You'll get at least as good a rate. The hotel doesn't have to give the third party a cut. There are fewer steps in between for something to get lost or garbled. And most importantly, the hotel has vastly more flexibility and control if something goes wrong or needs to change.

Personal experience: Uncle booked a set of hotel rooms for a reunion trip. We got there at the appointed time. The hotel searched and searched, and finally found all five rooms booked under my brother's name. (He does not share Uncle's first or last name, and there was no good reason to search for him.) It must have been an extra hour or more at the desk sorting out booking-dot-com's mess.

[FIREin2018]

General advice, both read/heard and experienced: book directly with the hotel if possible. If you use a third-party site, use it as a search engine, not a booking service. That is, find the place, then go directly to the hotel website or call for the reservation. 

Not true for holiday inn or Wyndham/Ramada.
Booking.com was cheaper.
I do not get pts at the hotel chain by going through Booking but I don't care.
I'm never to rack up enough pts to make it useful

[Lady Stash]

General advice, both read/heard and experienced: book directly with the hotel if possible. If you use a third-party site, use it as a search engine, not a booking service. That is, find the place, then go directly to the hotel website or call for the reservation. 

I 2nd this advice.  I've used Booking.com maybe 6 times.  Two of those I showed up and the room I was given wasn't at all what I booked or paid for.  In one case, I paid for a suite with a kitchen and work area and was given a normal hotel room.   In another case I paid for a suite with windows and was given a windowless room with nothing but bunkbeds. 

In both cases, I had screen shots with pictures and descriptions of what I reserved on Booking.com.   The first hotel tried to make it right (but insisted it wasn't their fault the listing was inaccurate). 
The 2nd hotel said it was Booking.com's fault for showing inaccurate pictures and refused to refund or fix it.   It was too much hassle to try and fight it, with Booking.com blaming the hotel and the hotel blaming Booking.com.  It seemed like nobody was liable to make sure the listing was accurate. 

I will never use Booking.com again. 

[BicycleB]

General advice, both read/heard and experienced: book directly with the hotel if possible. If you use a third-party site, use it as a search engine, not a booking service. That is, find the place, then go directly to the hotel website or call for the reservation. 

I 2nd this advice.  I've used Booking.com maybe 6 times.  Two of those I showed up and the room I was given wasn't at all what I booked or paid for.  In one case, I paid for a suite with a kitchen and work area and was given a normal hotel room.   In another case I paid for a suite with windows and was given a windowless room with nothing but bunkbeds. 

In both cases, I had screen shots with pictures and descriptions of what I reserved on Booking.com.   The first hotel tried to make it right (but insisted it wasn't their fault the listing was inaccurate). 
The 2nd hotel said it was Booking.com's fault for showing inaccurate pictures and refused to refund or fix it.   It was too much hassle to try and fight it, with Booking.com blaming the hotel and the hotel blaming Booking.com.  It seemed like nobody was liable to make sure the listing was accurate. 

I will never use Booking.com again.

I also have had very negative experiences with booking.com, also caused by communication failure between hotel and booking site.

I suspect that booking.com harvests hotel data, pre-sells it, then runs into problems whenever the hotel doesn't perform as their clumsy automation claimed - even while booking.com itself does not respond quickly to the hotels, or provide adequate customer service to problems of retail customers.

My actual experience was to book through them, then have the hotel refuse to acknowledge the booking in spite of me printing out the confirmation. They required me to book a room from scratch directly from the hotel and seek refund from booking.com, which never came. The loops of attempting to contact booking.com, both at the time and afterwards, were extremely frustrating in addition to the actual failures to execute and repay.

My pithy conclusion: booking.com is the rare site that can't become enshittified - because it was that way from the start!

[NotJen]

My actual experience was to book through them, then have the hotel refuse to acknowledge the booking in spite of me printing out the confirmation. They required me to book a room from scratch directly from the hotel and seek refund from booking.com, which never came. The loops of attempting to contact booking.com, both at the time and afterwards, were extremely frustrating in addition to the actual failures to execute and repay.

My pithy conclusion: booking.com is the rare site that can't become enshittified - because it was that way from the start!

If you do try to risk using a 3rd party booking site, ALWAYS call the hotel directly and ask to confirm that your confirmation number matches what you think you have booked.  If the 3rd party booking site only gives you THEIR confirmation number, and not the actual hotel confirmation number, bail.  You're probably gonna have a bad time.

I'm a front desk agent - if you don't have a valid confirmation number (and your info isn't otherwise in our system), there is nothing we can do, you don't actually have a reservation with us.  Something has gone wrong in the middle.  We can't give you a free room based on an email that isn't from our property.  All we can do is make a new reservation on the spot, paid that day, if we even have a room available.

Most of the places I've worked don't allow 3rd party bookings, thank goodness.

My first year at the front desk, I had a guest who thought they had a reservation, but neither I, nor the manager, could find them in our system - not at our property or any other property in the park, not on any dates that year or the next.  We couldn't match resv number, name, address, phone, email.  Nothing.  Hours later when I was staring at our short list of arrivals that hadn't shown up, I figured out that the 3rd party agent made the reservation in THEIR name, with absolutely no reference to the actual guest in the reservation (based on some suspicious address/phone info in the booking).  I never found out if I was right, but I'm pretty sure that's what happened.  I hope the guest was able to get things straightened out when they got home.

Just best to avoid 3rd parties.

[crocheted_stache]

General advice, both read/heard and experienced: book directly with the hotel if possible. If you use a third-party site, use it as a search engine, not a booking service. That is, find the place, then go directly to the hotel website or call for the reservation. 

Not true for holiday inn or Wyndham/Ramada.
Booking.com was cheaper.
I do not get pts at the hotel chain by going through Booking but I don't care.
I'm never to rack up enough pts to make it useful

I'm glad it worked for you. Between my own experiences, the horror stories here and elsewhere, and the frustration and difficulty it seems to cause the hotels, I'm not convinced a discount is worth it.

[BicycleB]

My actual experience was to book through them, then have the hotel refuse to acknowledge the booking in spite of me printing out the confirmation. They required me to book a room from scratch directly from the hotel and seek refund from booking.com, which never came. The loops of attempting to contact booking.com, both at the time and afterwards, were extremely frustrating in addition to the actual failures to execute and repay.

My pithy conclusion: booking.com is the rare site that can't become enshittified - because it was that way from the start!

If you do try to risk using a 3rd party booking site, ALWAYS call the hotel directly and ask to confirm that your confirmation number matches what you think you have booked.  If the 3rd party booking site only gives you THEIR confirmation number, and not the actual hotel confirmation number, bail.  You're probably gonna have a bad time.

I'm a front desk agent - if you don't have a valid confirmation number (and your info isn't otherwise in our system), there is nothing we can do, you don't actually have a reservation with us.  Something has gone wrong in the middle.  We can't give you a free room based on an email that isn't from our property.  All we can do is make a new reservation on the spot, paid that day, if we even have a room available.

Most of the places I've worked don't allow 3rd party bookings, thank goodness.

My first year at the front desk, I had a guest who thought they had a reservation, but neither I, nor the manager, could find them in our system - not at our property or any other property in the park, not on any dates that year or the next.  We couldn't match resv number, name, address, phone, email.  Nothing.  Hours later when I was staring at our short list of arrivals that hadn't shown up, I figured out that the 3rd party agent made the reservation in THEIR name, with absolutely no reference to the actual guest in the reservation (based on some suspicious address/phone info in the booking).  I never found out if I was right, but I'm pretty sure that's what happened.  I hope the guest was able to get things straightened out when they got home.

Just best to avoid 3rd parties.

Thanks, @NotJen. Understanding the system helps.

Ok, verify hotel's reservation number in advance with the hotel! If I ever use such a system again. :)