It's interesting. Because on bdc it is also combined with a show of limited quantity. '4 people are looking at this property' and you see there are only 2 rooms.
It's going to get overused pretty quickly I think.
But, yes, it does cause panic..
Well, you all know that as a B&B we do not use on-line booking. We have been a successful small B&B for a quarter of a century and have managed fine without it. But, since we are the exception, and since third party booking is rampant for hotels, we have recently personall had the displeasure of experiencing bdc and ex ped ia first hand as we scrambled to find last minute lodging in London.
It was not a pleasant experience. It seems that rates change minute to minute. Rooms are available...and then they are not. We finally ended up over paying for a room only to find upon arrival at 11pm that the hotel was sold out. It was NOT a pleasant experience. The very idea of using some of these pressure tactics to sell a room goes against all that we stand for. I would rather go door to door selling vacuum cleaners than to pressure a weary traveler into booking under false pretense.
By theway, we survived the ordeal...but just barely. At the moment we are watching our first snow fall as we sip morning coffee that someone else made! Cancelled flights, late nights in unplanned hotels and bad airport food are hopefully in our past!
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There are certain dates around here where finding a room within 60 miles is almost impossible. Booking ahead of time is required. But there are still those who don't book ahead and I had DAYS of the phone calls looking for a room, any room. And what was available on BDC and XPDA was either there only early in the morning for a few minutes (as cancellations came in) or so overpriced! There are just places where last minute is never a good idea.
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Oh, it was not last minute by choice...heavens no! We made reservations months in advance but because of a cancelled flight we lost our original booking and arrived in London 24 hours later than expected.....too late to catch a train to our next destination.
We did have a CONFIRMED last minute reservation, made on ex ped ia, but it was not honored at the hotel. That was the point of my last post. Normally I would call the hotel directly but I did feel pressured into making this reservation ....and it was not a pleasant experience.
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Did you call Expedia? The contract that all hotels have with Expedia is that if they don't honour a booking, for whatever reason, they are legally obliged to find you like accommodations. It's actually clearly spelled out in the contract. Expedia would have called the hotel and asked them to honour the contract or would have found you other accommodations and at the same time known that this hotel is violating the contract.
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Of coarse we called ex ped ia, in fact the hotel was very gracious in letting us use their phone. Apparently the booking had bounced back to Expe dia but they neglected to notify us. We were on the phone, being transferred and disconnected for over an hour trying to sort it out. Finally, I went back on line to their site, found another hotel in the general area that showed a vacancy, and asked them to please call the hotel to verify the vacancy......after the first fiasco I thought I had better double check. They said they called and that we wold be all set.
We paid for another taxi to get to the second hotel only to be told that they had a boiler problem and could not give us a room. I wanted to cry. It was almost midnight.
Long story made shorter, the staff at the second hotel was sympathetic and put us up in a "sister" hotel, paying for the additional taxi ride. They upgraded us as well.
Still, 2 misses by ex ped ia is inexcusable, don't you think? I squeezed a $25 refund out of them for one of the taxi rides but that's all the compensation they gave for their screw ups.
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