I’m so used to having great service from US based companies, that I was really surprised when I hit a wall with booking.com. They’ve worked very well for me in the past, and then suddenly, there is always a first time, I got a problem and needed their assistance, and I wish I didn’t. My entire communication was a pure waste of time.

I went to Greece, and the hotel didn’t have rooms. They said that they informed booking.com for the mistake 2 weeks ago and booking didn’t notify me back. They offered to find me another accommodation and showed me a street comfortably far from their place – “Here – you’ll probably find something on that street” – well, I didn’t.

It took me about an hour to contact booking on the phone, they are very busy. The support suggested that I move to another area, about 1h away by car. I didn’t want that.

Then the next thing I heard from booking was a blame that the problem was my fault because they sent me an email 2 days ago and I didn’t respond. It turned out that the email came after I tried to check in. This was the last meaningful communication I had with their support. Then I was dumped to their ticket-closing unit, which sends standard responses. It’s pretty much ‘apologize for the inconvenience’ with some generated text around, which mentions your name and reservation number.

If you fall in the same situation, you should probably try to hold the line and have your problem resolved with the first actual human talking to you. The email support is just for the time to pass and cure all wounds.

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I found another place by walking around and asking people. We had to spend two nights in a basement apartment until they had rooms upstairs. I killed a two-digit number of mosquitos these two nights. The day we moved out, another family arrived – they said they had a reservation on booking.com for the same place as us. I hope they enjoyed the basement and didn’t mind the blood on the walls.