Expedia.com and Hotwire.com take my money

Well, I figured I will see what the power of the people means when you are wronged.

The short of the long story is the following:

- In 2008, I used www.hotwire.com to book my hotel in Amsterdam. When I showed up to checkin despite the reservation confirmation number the hotel denied my reservation. This hotel never heard of this company that booked this reservation, I think it was a Raddisson. After almost an hour of trying to educate the hotel, and many dollars spent on calls to the States I could not get this resolved. It seems the corporate office never informed all of their sites of the booking service of www.hotwire.com and www.expedia.com .
- The irony is I managing hotels in the US and have used the relationships of Expedia, Hotwire, Hotels.com etc for booking reservations. It is a delicate relationship as these power partners know that if I don't like something they are doing I can take my business elsewhere. A delicate relationship of management.
- So I had to book another night at this hotel and pay double basically. Upon getting back in the US I contacted my marketing manager for my hotel and let him know of the problem. It was not easy but they eventually fixed the issue and gave me a $100 credit in Hotdollars to be used, which didn't cover my time, phone costs and frustration while on vacation, but it was a nice gesture.
- I tried to use it throughout the year and it never showed up in my account. I called my contact repeatedly with no return calls, I tried to get it straightened out with Hotwire.com and no luck.
- Time passed and I moved on to other things, but still used the service here and there. Even though I was pissed about not have access to the money that was due to me.
- I decided today to try one more time. Well, it seems that the hotdollars where deposited in an old account I do not use and have not since 2005. I had them pull up my correct account that I use and they see the activity. All I want is the $100 that was given to me, never used and now I find out expired since it sat in the old account.
- Obviously an error on the market manager with www.hotwire.com since the email I exchanged with him was the correct account and not the one someone searched and put it into.
- I appealed to Marco #1488 at www.hotwire.com and all he did was stick to his trained script. Despite the unjust decision not to give me credit I explained to him that I use their service for my hotel guests. And if this is the difficulty in which they resolve issues I may have to go elsewhere. Take it to a higher manager as this is surely unfair and an easy fix. Nope he continued to be unwilling to show any compassion nor offer a fair solution.
- I will try to appeal to higher authorities, but in the meantime I offer this to you travelers. There are so many other booking engines out there that you can get the same service. Be wary of the problems I have had with Expedia.com and Hotwire.com. This is not to say I won't book with them again, but they have moved down the list a lot. Mainly for the inhuman method of truly looking at my situation and sticking to a script of the dollars expired so we can't help you.

You have no choices and I would weigh those choices against my problems especially when traveling abroad. There are enough challenges when traveling and you don't need more from companies that forget the customer and are out for rules and profit. Sounds similar with the corporate greed in the banking industry.