Hotels.com’s failures leave customers waiting in rain

Q

I recently reserved a hotel apartment in Barcelona, Spain, through Hotels.com. In the fine print of my reservation, it instructed me to call 24 hours before I arrived to make arrangements to pick up the key. For me, that was an international call. The listed phone number was incorrect, so I couldn’t reach the hotel.

I called Hotels.com, and a representative put me on hold for five to 10 minutes. I asked to be called back. Someone called after an hour, by which time my husband and I were at sea and out of touch.

Hotels.com didn’t send me a text or email. The next day, we arrived at the hotel, in the rain. No one was there. We found the correct phone number on the door, made another international call and discovered the hotel had no record of my reservation.

I called Hotels.com. A representative said the company’s computers were down, and he refused to do anything. I asked for a supervisor but got nowhere. He hung up on me. By then, I had been on the phone for 40 minutes at 40 cents per minute. The hotel finally sent someone who looked at my written reservation and got a key.

I’ve contacted Hotels.com but have not received an answer. I’d like a refund of my phone bill and an apology. Can you help? — Gail Jaworski, West Palm Beach, Fla.

A: Wow, talk about a streak of bad luck. And Hotels.com didn’t make things any better. I think you deserved better — much better.

Hotel apartments are not like standard hotels. Sometimes there’s no check-in lobby, which means you either need a key or you’ll be left standing outside in the rain. So a company like Hotels.com needs to be extra careful that the numbers it lists are right.

A Hotels.com representative shouldn’t have hung up on you or forced you to call back to cancel your reservation. Instead, a representative should have politely helped you find a solution instead of telling you to phone back later at your expense.

Incidents like these are what give online agencies a bad name and, frankly, keep human travel agents in business. A person you know, with whom you had booked your vacation, would have worked directly with you to make sure you had a key to your hotel room. A real agent wouldn’t have left you standing outside in the rain.

I list the names, numbers and email addresses of the customer service managers at Hotels.com’s parent company, Expedia, on my consumer-advocacy website: elliott.org/company

-contacts/expedia. A call to one of them might have resolved this when you arrived in Barcelona.

After you returned, Hotels.com should have responded to you promptly, not ignored you for three days. I contacted the company on your behalf. It offered you an $89 gift card and an apology as compensation. Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine and the author of “How to Be the World’s Smartest Traveler.” You can read more travel tips on his blog, elliott.org, or email him at chris@elliott.org.