The rate for Carrie Cleveland’s apartment in Brooklyn is $125 a night, not the $46 to which she agreed when she made the reservation. Her online agency gives her one choice: pay the new rate. What can she do about this Booking.com price error?
Question
I’d like your opinion on an email we received yesterday about a lodging reservation in Brooklyn I made through Booking.com.
I made the reservation more than a month ago at Apartment Reggae Den, a vacation rental property. Yesterday, I received an email that Booking.com had the wrong rate posted on its website. The price wasn’t $46 a night, but $125 a night.
When Booking.com accepted my reservation, I stopped looking for other locations and now have few options in the area. I needed lodging. Booking.com seems to not allow any changes from the customer’s end regarding this reservation. What should I do? — Carrie Cleveland, Burnsville, Minn.
Answer
You want my opinion? I think Booking.com should honor its price.
Your dilemma is a little bit like a Chinese finger trap. Booking.com won’t let you cancel your reservation because the deadline for making a change has passed. At the same time, it’s almost tripled the price of your accommodations. That doesn’t seem fair.
This isn’t an obvious “fat-finger” fare — the kind where someone at the online agency makes a decimal point error, giving away $400 hotel rooms for $40. I think $46 looked like a terrific price, and the Booking.com reservation was a contract for that room — a deal it should honor. (Related: I canceled my Royal Jordanian Airlines tickets months ago. Where’s my money?)
OK, some of you skeptics are probably thinking, “$46 in Brooklyn? Get outta here!” And in the past, I’ve taken a dim view of readers who take advantage of rate errors. If you’d made several reservations at that rate and told all of your friends to do the same thing, I might send this Booking.com price error case to the “rejected” file. But this was just you, looking for a good deal on lodging in New York.
Fixing this Booking.com price error
Your online travel agency should have worked with you to resolve this Booking.com price error. I list the names, numbers and email addresses of the Booking.com executives on my consumer advocacy site.
I reviewed the paper trail between you and Booking.com. The Reggae Den is responsible for entering the correct rate information on Booking.com, according to the booking site. (Related: My hotel had no record of my Booking.com reservation. Why can’t I get a refund?)
It turns out Booking.com would have allowed you to cancel this reservation, so you had the option of getting a full refund and finding alternate accommodations. (Related: A little bed problem on my Booking.com reservation.)
But was this another a Booking.com price error? In fact, it wasn’t.
“It is not Booking.com that owns this property and therefore cannot honor any reservation that was made with an obvious error in rates,” a representative told you in an email. “You will not be able to find a one-bedroom apartment in any of the five boroughs for $46 per night. These rates are obviously wrong and therefore not binding.” (Here’s how to find the best hotel at the lowest rate.)
I wasn’t happy with that answer, so I contacted Booking.com on your behalf. It apologized to you and offered a $150 voucher good for a future booking, which you accepted. I hope you enjoy your stay in New York.
