Hotels.com: A misleading and unenforceable "price Guarantee"

Today I have to share my mini-adventure of the day that has me, I must say, much made smile:

We are preparing our family vacations. A month ago, I booked, via the site Hotels.com, a part of our stay in a large Asian city, in a fairly high-end establishment for the whole family. Hotels.com, like any reservation site, offers and announces high and strong a "price guarantee" which undertakes to repay the difference in fare if you find cheaper elsewhere.

Yesterday, in prospecting for the continuation of the trip, I came across more advantageous rates for the same period, the same hotel and the same type of rooms. So several solutions were available to me:

1. Do nothing, and satisfy me of this reservation a little more expensive: the difference of tariff being a small hundred francs, or env. 10% of the bill was an acceptable laziness solution.
2. Cancel my reservation on Hotels.com and make a reservation via Booking.com
3. Test the paperwork necessary to take advantage of this famous "Price Guarantee" at Hotels.com.

I am a player: so obviously the third solution has been chosen. So I read scrupulously the explanations and the procedure to make my request for reimbursement, then completed the form, attached an "optional" screenshot of the competitive offer more advantageous, then sent all that, confident.

A first answer was not expected: I was informed that "as they could no longer have access to the offer" (which was wrong: The offer was always online, visible to all, even without registering to my user account and even in "browsing Private "), I had to provide them with a screenshot of the offer (which, if you followed well, I had already attached to my original application). And that's when I told myself that they would not do otherwise if they wanted to put sticks in the wheels to my démkarche… But I bent to their request, and re-sent them a full screenshot.

Quickly, I got a response:

(…) We regret to inform you that the period of cancellation of the offer differs from that of your reservation on our site. In fact, on the offer, cancellation can be made free of charge until July 26th, 23:59 (time of establishment). Off, your reservation offers this extended option until 27 July, 17h59 (establishment time).

So certainly the offer is the same, except that the cancellation period differs from… Six o'clock. The price guarantee is therefore not applicable. It's crystal clear. Verified, their position is in complete coherence with their general conditions. It can therefore be concluded that hotels. com carefully chooses the cancellation time to be different from that of other booking sites, so that the price guarantee is never applicable.

It's good to know, and it even made me laugh.

I obviously explained to them my way of thinking, and I cancelled my reservation at them to make the same order, more advantageous, at the competitor.

In conclusion: These booking sites are very practical, but they have pricing modes and general conditions opaque and deceptive. They are also strongly criticized by the hotliers themselves, forced to accept very harsh contractual conditions for them. I was framed by Hotels.com but I have no doubt that the same kind of deceit could have taken place in their competitors.

I can therefore only repeat there must, after using these booking sites like directories, book his stays directly on the site of the hotel, or by phone/e-mail, as far as possible, without going through these intermediaries.