Holiday booking sites

[Spellczech]

Am off to Italy on Monday. I did what I usually do and bought flights and hotels separately. Flights to Naples were overpriced so instead I'm flying to Rome and taking the 1hr fast train to Naples. Problem I've had this year was with Booking.com though...

 

I booked a bunch of hotels and apartments on 2 August and most of them were due to take money in last couple of weeks of August or pay at the hotel. Booking.com took a payment on 22 August on my AMEX no problem, but then on 25th at 5.36am I got an email saying they'd failed to take a payment of £289 and I had to give them a valid card within 6hrs. Well I didn't see this email until 8pm by which time the hotel had unilaterally cancelled the booking. I contacted the hotel and they told me I'd have to rebook as they could not resurrect the booking - only problem was the price was now £805 for 2 nights!. They didn't answer as to why they were in such an hurry to cancel the booking.

 

I became a bit concerned about other payments, so contacted the next hotel due to take money who told me Booking.com are responsible for taking the payment. So why did Booking.com not try the other 2 Credit cards that were registered with their site? My Amex had thousands of pounds of spare credit as I only use it for holidays...I then phoned Amex to try to find out what had gone wrong with the payment only to be told that no attempt was made to charge my card on either the 24th or 25th.

 

Booking.com have so far ignored 2 messages about this booking entirely.

 

Upshot for me was I booked a different hotel on Ischia for less money ironically, if somewhat further from the beach, but this whole process has irritated me. If this is the future of automation then we are in for a rough ride...