I'm attempting to book some hotels in Europe for May/June. I was using HotelsCombined.com (via Cashrewards) to search and for several hotels that I was interested in, Amoma.com was at the top of the results. Quite often for ½ the lowest price of the other sites or even less.
Great I thought, clicked through and attempted to book. Despite it saying there were '3 rooms available' on their site, when I put in all my details and hit book, it says 'sorry this room has sold out' and then proceeds to show me an available room in the same hotel, for more expensive than other sites found through the aggregator (e.g. Hotels.com, Expedia or Priceline). It has happened multiple times over the weekend, and I've yet to book anything through amoma.com.
To give an example if anyone wants to check themselves, the Holiday Inn in Plovdiv Bulgaria for 12th to 15th May shows up as AUD$201 for the 3 nights (both on HotelsCombined.com and Amoma.com). When you click through it says 3 rooms left, then it says sold out and goes up to AUD$432. They sent me an email about 30 mins after trying to book the first time yesterday, saying that it was still available for $201. I clicked through from the email and again, can't book at that price.
I've seen very few negative reviews of Amoma and most of them were reviews saying they booked but the room wasn't available and they had to do a chargeback to get a refund. A majority of the reviews however are glowing saying they got a cheap hotel room and everything went fine. I don't know what to believe, but I can demonstrate this happening for multiple hotels in multiple countries, so it's not like a glitch affecting just one!
Plenty and plenty of negative reviews online. Avoid them and try somewhere else more reliable. Sometimes paying little extra for peace of mind can be a bargain too.