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Wrong Hotel!
The Travel Troubleshooter · December 17, 2001

Q: I have a big gripe. I bought a vacation to Las Vegas on uBid.com. The hotels offered through the bid were the Stardust, the Sahara, or the Desert Paradise Resort condominiums. I picked the Stardust.

Apparently, uBid.com uses two other companies to handle its bookings-Thrifty Travel and Minivacations. When I got more information through Minivacations, it only said that I could get these hotels if they were available.

I sent in a certificate for the dates that I wanted. A few weeks later I got a confirmation number but no hotel. When I flew to Las Vegas and went to the Minivacations welcome center to get my papers for the Stardust, the clerk there said they had our name but no hotel. They didn't do business with the Stardust and would check to find an available hotel.

Minivacations came up with a terrible resort a couple of miles from the strip that was totally unacceptable. We booked ourselves at the Flamingo instead. My question is: How do I get a refund? Minivacations is claiming there was no guarantee of the hotel, but on the receipt I printed off ubid.com, there was a list of the three hotels for me to choose from.

-- Darcy Trewnick

A: I don't think you'll be able to get a refund. I checked with uBid.com and got their version of events. Based on it, I think you should consider writing this one off.

You mentioned Thrifty Travel in your complaint, but uBid.com claims it has no record of you doing business with Thrifty. They do, however, show you as a customer of Leisure Link Travel, another uBid.com vendor. uBid.com contacted Leisure Link to see if they could find out what happened.

Leisure Link says the hotel package it sold you never had the Stardust or Desert Paradise listed as an option on the bid page, as you claimed. Marilyn Kafka, the uBid.com representative who investigated your complaint, believes you may have also been looking at the Thrifty Travel auction and confused it with the Leisure Link package that you won.

Leisure Link also faxed uBid.com copies of e-mails between you and the company confirming the Flamingo Hotel for the dates you were there. The notes suggest that you knew well in advance of your arrival in Las Vegas that you were booked into the Flamingo and that there would be a surcharge for the dates that you chose to travel.

Between your version of the events and uBid.com's, I'm not sure who to believe.

But here's something I'm sure of: The total amount of your refund would be less than $100, which compared with the cost of the rest of your vacation is relatively insignificant. Consider letting this one go.

Your story serves as a cautionary tale for others who book vacations online, and even though I couldn't resolve it, I thought it was worth publishing. It's important to remember that what you see online isn't treated the same as an actual piece of paper-a receipt, invoice, or ticket-by a travel supplier.

It's possible that you saw what you said you saw on the website. You may even have a printout that you believe indicates you had a reservation with the Stardust. But in the end, the only thing that matters to the site and hotel is what you actually signed up for. And, based on the paperwork that uBid.com has shared with me, you got exactly what you booked.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator based in Key Largo, Fla. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion. ChrisCrossings appears weekly on this site.