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A Hotwire.com refund in a flash? You must be dreaming

September 28, 2009

ontheroad“We are all too familiar with the sometimes draconian policies and less-than-stellar customer service,” Clay Hawley’s e-mail began. “This story is the opposite of that.”

Hawley ought to know. As a travel agent who specializes in cruises, he sees the very best and worst customer service in the travel industry.

But his story isn’t about the merits of using a real travel agent, surprisingly. It’s about how an online travel agency — in this case, Hotwire — got it right.

My wife had to fly to Santa Barbara on business last week, I booked flight, hotel and car all online. As a travel professional, I am very familiar with the process, and it was seamless — that was, until she arrived at the Santa Barbara Airport and went to pick up her car reserved through Hotwire.

Once at the counter she discovered her drivers license had expired this year. For me, it was a loss. I know the “pre-paid” option is usually nonrefundable and I just expected the loss.

The next day, she contacted Hotwire, spoke with a rep who said they would happily refund her once they checked out her story.

She spoke with Hotwire Friday. Today is Monday and we received notice yesterday that we are receiving a full refund. This is in contrast to a co-worker who experienced a similar with Expedia and has yet to receive resolution.

It’s good to see that someone is thinking about the future.

Nice work, Hotwire.

Now, never mind the bigger problem, which is that Hawley’s wife is driving around with an expired license. I’ll leave that for them to figure out.

The point is, Hotwire didn’t have to refund anything. Look here.

Hotwire’s decision to refund a nonrefundable rate is a great way to build customer loyalty. May not be the best way to make a profit, but Hotwire has apparently taken a long view: What’s the loss of one prepaid car rental in comparison with the loyalty we’ll create over the long term?

And to those of you who think no one would ever be loyal to Hotwire, think again. Where do you think Hawley will rent his next car?

Come to think of it, where do you think I get my rental cars?

(Photo: Heidi & Matt/Flickr Creative Commons)

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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15 comments

  • Carver Farrow

    Excellent move by Hotwire. The pittance that they lost through the refund will be more than made up by the good press and publicitiy.

    And of course people are “loyal” to Hotwire and Priceline and the like.

  • Thalassa

    Why would a travel agent use Hotwire in the first place?

    And does his standing as a travel agent have anything to do with them refunding the money?

  • http://cestbeth.com/ Elizabeth

    I have had good experiences with Hotwire myself. I booked a client a non-refundable car with Hotwire. When he arrived, the rental car company providing the car was out of cars (!), so he had to pay for a rental with another company. I contacted Hotwire on his behalf and Hotwire refunded the difference in price between their rental and the rental he had to purchase last-minute, and they gave us a credit towards another rental. Now that’s customer service at its finest.

  • Daniel Scheeff

    I am writing in reference to an experience that my father and I had at:
    America’s Best Value Inn
    7810 Commerce Drive
    Florence, Kentucky 41042
    On the last week of August I took a much needed personal vacation to visit my friend who lives in Olive Hill, Kentucky. My father who is currently laid off from work joined me. After our visit, we thought it would be fun to visit the Newport Aquarium which is just outside Cincinnati, Ohio since I have been breeding fish since I was in 8th grade and have never visited an actual aquarium. Therefore, on a recommendation of a friend who lives in Cleveland, I booked a room using http://www.hotwire.com so that after spending a day at the aquarium, my father and I could just take it easy and drive home after being able to rest up a bit. What was a great vacation was ruined the moment we got to the hotel they sent us to on Sunday, August 30, 2009.
    The first room that we went into had an odor that cannot be described! It was so bad that when we opened the door we literally jumped back out onto the balcony because neither one of us could handle it. So, we went back to the office and told the clerk that we needed a new room because the other room smelled really bad. So, we got our second set of keys and went to another room on the complete opposite side of the building. When we opened the door it was the exact same situation. I would describe the smell as maybe part mold, part cigarettes, and God only knows what else. I immediately called hotwire (which I needed to use my notebook to pull up their number as I didn’t have a printout with me) from the balcony and when I needed information off of my pc I would hold my breath and run into the room real quick to get it and then repeat it to the person I was speaking with while standing on the balcony. I spoke to two different people and neither person wanted to offer a satisfactory way of assisting me. In the end, we gave the keys back and drove from Florence, Kentucky all the way back to Cleveland, Ohio and were both dead tired. I am amazed that we didn’t have an accident.
    Hotwire wanted to either put me in another, more expensive hotel OR give me “hotwire points” towards a future purchase. I had asked if they could find another hotel/motel to put us in for the same cost but they didn’t have any available in the $50.00 price range. Neither my father nor I could afford more than $50 for a room as we had wanted a room for $30-$35 to begin with and thus we were already over budget. The second option is of no use either as I NEVER travel, I have NEVER even been on a plane or I use my own car when traveling and thus NEVER need a rental car (the 3 services they offer). My mom called hotwire and they were very rude and gave her the same run around; absolutely refusing to refund our money. None of us can understand why we are being charged for a hotel that we couldn’t stay in due to health reasons. In fact, before we got to the hotel my father and I were both starving and were going to get a pizza and watch some cable (we don’t have cable TV at our house) TV. It took about 4 hours for us to get our appetite back. We were both nauseous (we would have gotten very sick if we had slept there).
    This whole experience is a nightmare and I am already determined to report Hotwire to the Better Business Bureau after everything is said and done. The total was $49.93.

    After having to go through the BBB, I got an email today saying I would get a refund. It only took over a month and a hundred hours of fighting to get my money back.

  • LeeAnne

    @Daniel Sheeff – I’m sorry you had such a bad experience. But I feel compelled to point out that you selected a ONE STAR hotel – one of the least expensive hotels in the Florence area. That’s ONE out of FIVE possible stars.

    While certainly nobody wants to stay in a room with a foul odor, what exactly, might I ask, were you expecting?

    It may help for you to gain a better understanding what these star ratings mean. A hotel that rates only one star is not going to be the Ritz…and you are very likely to find it to be sub-standard. That’s the chance you take when you book a one-star hotel. That’s the lowest rating possible. It doesn’t get any lower than that.

    In this case, you took a gamble on a really cheap hotel – and it didn’t pay off. Yet you expected Hotwire to refund your money…in spite of their well-publicized policy that their rooms are non-refundable.

    I did a quick check, and most reviewers I could find for this hotel rate it cheap and basic but clean and acceptable. It’s hard to believe that not a SINGLE room in their hotel was livable from a health perspective. Perhaps your noses are oversensitive to scents? If the hotel was truly unbearable, I doubt they would be selling any rooms at all – except perhaps on an hourly basis. Which, by the way, is not uncommon at ONE STAR HOTELS.

    In the future, if you want to avoid substandard hotel rooms, I suggest you pony up a little more money. In the world of hotels, you really do get what you pay for.

    Kudos to Hotwire for reimbursing Mr. Hawley for his wife’s car. As for Mr. Sheeff’s – I disagree with that refund. If Hotwire was expected to refund every traveler who got a nasty room in a one-star hotel, they’d go out of business.

  • Justin

    Daniel Scheeff,

    Newport is nice for a one time visit. I’ve been there a couple times. Once when it FIRST opened and then one or two additional times. I am sorry you didn’t get to see it. A native Ohioan myself, it is definitely something to visit to say I’ve done that once. I hope you can make it back there. Maybe you should have stayed in Cincinnati instead versus Kentucky? It’s literally JUST over the bridge. That side of Kentucky isn’t the best of areas, anyway. Not to say Cincinnati is peachy around there either but near the river is quite nice. Did you put the hotel on a credit card. Don’t forget, you always have the option to dispute a charge if something like this happen.

    Justin

  • Thalassa

    Daniel Scheeff,

    I stayed at an America’s Best Value Hotel once when I was on the road and no other hotel was available within 50 miles. It was a horrible experience. You can’t blame Hotwire for the problem.

    ABVH has below standard hotels at below standard prices. You really do get what you pay for.

  • http://www.israelfaxx.com Don Canaan

    About 4 years ago Hotwire refused a refund to me (I won’t go into details here but it basically was about a Midnight arrival and a 6 am departure the same day on a weekend trip to Miami). Total expenditure was about $180 for the trip that I obviously did not take..

    I took out a small claims court action in Ohio against this Calif-based firm. Of course they did not show up to contest the action (a lawyer would have cost them more than the $180). I received a default judgment against Hotwire, mailed them the judgment (which also included $35 in costs) and Hotwire sent me a check.

  • LeeAnne

    @Justin – why would Mr. Sheeff’s credit card resolve that dispute in his favor?

    Let’s look at the facts: he bought a super-cheap hotel room in a one-star hotel. He got a super-cheap hotel room in a one-star hotel. He chose not to stay there.

    Frankly I’m surprised he got his money back – but when companies are faced with an apoplectic customer willing to spend over a hundred hours to get back $50 (that’s 50 cents an hour, btw), who is also willing to file erroneous reports to the BBB and vociferously complain on well-known travel blogs, I’m sure some bean-counter somewhere just said, “Pay the dude!” Think of all the hours of labor he sucked up from the companies he was fighting! (They all surely make more than 50 cents an hour.)

    As far as I’m concerned, that was extortion. But it’s understandable why Hotwire gave in. Who wants to devote untold hours of their labor force to fighting over 50 bucks?

  • http://americaonline barbie45

    In Justins defense he waas entitled to a sanitary room ;I do 50.00 a paltry fee for an unacceptable room; he had that right to dispute that claim;and glad he was accomodated. And if his opinion it was totally unacceptable reporting it to the BBB was a good idea; and it was his right ; I do not think he would have went to these timely measures if he was not sure it was unaccetable and public beware;

  • Erica

    I’m really surprised that Hotwire was so nice. I had a horrible experience with Hotwire. A couple of years ago one of my credit card numbers was stolen and I had to put a stop payment on the card (it was a Visa card). During this same period of time I had made a car rental reservation through Hotwire using my Amex card. Later in the year when I tried to make another reservation on Hotwire I kept getting an error message on the website. When I called customer service I got a VERY nasty Hotwire employee telling me that they were ON to me – he claimed I had disputed the charge for the car rental on my Amex card. I tried explaining that I never disputed any charges on my Amex card (I even called Amex to verify this which Amex did). However, this Hotwire thug wouldn’t listen and kept yelling at me. He screamed that I am now banned (and anyone with my last name is banned) from ever using their website.If that’s the type of employees they have, I have no problem avoiding Hotwire.

  • Daniel Scheeff

    First of all Hotwire rated it 2.5 stars. Second, if you look at Hotwire’s website they make the claim that you can “trust” them because they only use the “best.” Third, Hotwire admitted to me that their research team found that my complaint did have cause after they did an investigation of their own. Fourth, it wasn’t that the room smelled, it was that you couldn’t stay in the room with out throwing up. My boss has horses and I would rather sleep in their stable than with them. I think the hotel THEY SENT me to had a mold problem. In fact, when we got to our second room the room next door was being aired out. Fifth, after getting the Better Business Bureau involved I did get my money back. Sixth, PC World mag. is looking into my incident as I just had one of their investigators contact me via email. Truth be told, the hotel that they sent me to should be condemned as I am sure that they are violating some major health codes. Oh and by the way, I ended up finding out later on that a room at America’s Best Value Inn is right is $50 to begin with…Hotwire sure saved me a lot of money!

  • Daniel Scheeff

    Just as a clarification, I just looked at my invoice and it is labeled as a 2 star hotel, not a 2.5. I don’t care if it was a 1 star though, a person should be able to stay there without getting sick. I am a landlord as a living and if one of my buildings smelled the way that hotel did, I would NEVER pass inspection. In my house we have two cats, a golden retriever, 5 turtles, about 10 large aquariums and a leopard gecko and so I have smelled some things in the past but NOTHING compares to the way this room was. Then when you talk to the Hotwire employees they are totally rude and mean. Hotwire is a joke!

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_UL7BVYBF2SIM5D35ZH6KJP32GU Sheldon

     http://5thingshotwirewonttellyou.blog.com/

     These tips were learned through a first time purchase made through Hotwire on 07/20/2011 Confirmation # 5090426857. Customer service refused to consider that I was given less than what I paid for even though they saw the star rating was downgraded a few days ago in Orbitz for the hotel. I hope my experiences with Hotwire Hot Rates® will help someone else shop smart. Happy Traveling!

  • IndianaDDD

    I’ll never do business with Hotwire again.  I recently booked two hotel rooms in Grand Rapids, MI through Hotwire.  Two days before we left on our vacation, my sister had a best friend die in a motorcycle accident.  I called Hotwire and told them about the situation and that my sister and her family wouldn’t be able to make it so we would only need one room.  They wouldn’t do anything about it without a death certificate.  Obviously we aren’t going to ask for a death certificate from this young man’s grieving mother just to save $80 on a hotel reservation.  I even asked if I could get refunded by a Hotwire gift certificate or credit toward a future hotel….and was denied.  How cold can one company possibly be??

    Never use Hotwire as things can happen at any time and plans can change.

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