Hi,
I am wondering if it's ok to book with these sites because all I see is negative reviews online and majority seem to be a nightmare.
Thanks
Is Hotels.com/Expedia trustworthy? Just keep reading all negative reviews
LGameChanger on 19/01/2015 - 18:34
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I've never used hotels.com but I've never had any issues with expedia and I used them extensively in Europe
99% of the time when everything goes right = fine
1% of time when something goes wrong = utterly incompetent
Reviews — Hotels.com gets 4.7/5 and Expedia gets 4.6/5 on StartHere/PricePal, where they invited all who purchased through the cashback network to participate in rating. You will see that they are generally pretty good.
On the other hand if you are just reading reviews on ProductReview.com.au, where many people only write when they have issues (to some extend here on OzBargain as well), then you'll find that the majority would be negative.
+1 People generally only bother to write a review when their experience has been bad, so many sites and community forums, including Ozbargain and Whingepool for e.g are often chock full of people complaining or whinging about bad service. this phenomenon is called the social media echo chamber (of negativity) — one person whinges, and the entire thread is suddenly all about how bad the product is.
I use Expedia fairly frequently to book hotels overseas, sometimes even flights and cars.
Their Android application is great for keeping track of all my booking details, etc.
I almost exclusively book using these two sites. Expedia is often my go-to if prices are the same across multiple sites, as I like to keep all my bookings together and I like the Expedia platform.
I only use Hotels.com with a coupon code. The taxes & fees kill it otherwise, but majority of the time a coupon code will take the price down to lower than advertised on any other site. Never had any issues with either site.
I like to use Booking .com and Agoda.Com. They never fail me.
I have booked hotels through hotels.com and is doing what they meant to do and the rate was acceptable at that time.
I normally check pricing through hotelscombined.com which compares many sites and their final pricing. I've used booking.com, wotif.com, agoda,.com, hotels.com and ctrip.com. all does the same thing and so far haven't had any bad experience.
Thank you everyone for the feed back, was really worried after reading the bad reviews!
Wondering how rooms are allocated? If I were to make two room booking would they be adjacent or random selection?
Generally if you contact the hotel directly after you've made the booking, they can adjust it in their system so you've got adjacent rooms.
Based on limited experience - randomly. Only if you contact them or smart enough to figure out, would adjoining rooms be assigned.
I always use Expedia, pretty good and efficient.
Though I have caught a dirty trick of theirs.
That is because of cookies and tracking, they know you've been looking at a deal for a while. You'll get notifications that the price has gone up during the booking process. Some options will disappear altogether.
What you do is to clear cookies and trackers and redo what you wanted. Price jumps back to what it was.
Made a booking all gone well. Phoned up the hotel right after and my booking was registered with them.
I did find that hotels.com had two prices! If you went through trivago.com you would get the lowest price, whilst straight through their website was much higher.
When I've booked with Hotels.com, it comes out as Expedia at the vendor end which used to confuse me. Don't know if that's only with certain hotels.
before booking any hotel online, find an Australian wholesaler who does the area you're looking at going to.
They might have better prices or better suggestions & you can actually talk to someone who's probably been there recently.
Wholelsalers specialise in certain areas, whereas OTA try to do everything.
just read a really interesting articles & OTA's.
Which will probably lead to higher prices charged by hotels in the 1st place so they can pay these huge commissions or downgrading of service at the hotels. Something has to give.
http://new-zealand.etbtravelnews.com/241992/dirty-tricks-ota…
I've used Hotels.com a lot, everywhere from Asia to Europe to the US and have never had a problem.