I had a recent experience with booking hotels through an airline that
\nI wish to share. It involves Continental Airlines, Super 8 Hotels and
\na concept I (and I suspect other Consumerist readers) had never
\nencountered before: The un-cancel-able hotel room.<\/p>\n
I booked a flight from New York to LAX on Febuary 28th of this year,
\nfor travel at the end of April (2 months early, for those counting).
\nI also needed a hotel, so I went to the “convenient” Continental
\nAirlines Hotel booking system and found a cheap Super 8 in [redacted],
\nCalifornia. The reviews were poor, but I didn’t need it for long and
\nit was very convenient to where I needed to be. I chose the special
\n“Continental.com Hotels Best Rate Guaranteed” fare, checked the
\nstandard boilerplate and booked it.<\/p>\n
The next day (still 2 months before my stay, for those counting), I
\nreconsidered the quality of the hotel and decided to upgrade for a
\ntreat. I went back to the Continental website, canceled my hotel
\nreservation and found a Comfort Inn slightly farther away and slightly
\nmore expensive but with better reviews. I thought I was ready for my
\nvacation.<\/p>\n
I receive my next credit card bill a few weeks later and find the
\nSuper 8 charge still on it (listed, of course, as a purchase at
\nContinental.com). I call up continental to inquire as to when I can
\nexpect my money back, and am shocked to discover that I NEVER WILL.
\nBecause the Super 8 hotel reservation CAN NOT BE CANCELED. That’s
\nright. I booked 2 months in advance, canceled THE NEXT DAY, and the
\nContinental will not refund my money because “the money has already
\ngone to the hotel, and the hotel does not allow cancellations”.
\nContinental, according to the nice man I’m talking to, is merely the
\nmiddleman. All they do is forward the money to the hotel. I called
\nthe Super 8’s manager, and he reiterated that he would not return my
\nmoney and, in fact, since I had canceled I would not be able to stay
\nthere either.<\/p>\n
Now I consider myself a pretty aware consumer, and I actually read the
\nboilerplate before I purchase anything. What got me was the terribly
\nworded Continental.com website. Before you make your reservation,
\nthey display in normal font the Cancellation Policy. That is where
\nthe problem is.<\/p>\n
Cancellation Policy of the Comfort Inn that I booked after canceling,
\nand 90% of ALL hotels on the site (I took a sample of 20 in the LA
\narea):<\/p>\n
Cancellation And Changes:
\n If you change or cancel this reservation after 12 AM local hotel
\ntime on Wednesday, April 28, 2010, you will be charged a penalty of 1
\nnight(s) room rate plus tax.<\/em><\/p>\nCancellation Policy of the Super 8 that has stolen my money:
\n
\nCancellation And Changes:
\n If you change or cancel this reservation before 12 AM local hotel
\ntime on Thursday, April 29, 2010, you will be charged a penalty of 3
\nnight(s) room rate plus tax.<\/em><\/p>\nDid you notice the difference? I certainly didn’t when I was booking
\nin the first place.<\/p>\n
That’s right. They changed the word “after” to “before”. That is the
\nONLY difference in the cancellation policies. I, of course, consider
\nthat a sort of legal bait and switch, where the contract you always
\nsign is exactly the same except for the one tiny word that changes the
\nmeaning entirely.<\/p>\n
So watch out everyone, because some hotels do not let you cancel.<\/p>\n
In the numerous phone calls I made, I learned:
\n1. Continental has no responsibility for this at all because they
\ndon’t make money of the service and it’s just for convenience. The
\ncancellation policies are those of the hotel.
\n2. Super 8 Corporate has no responsibility, as these contracts are
\nnegotiated individually between the website and the hotel.
\n3. The specific Super 8 [redacted] has no responsibility because the
\nwebsite said I couldn’t cancel and the manager keeps hanging up on me.<\/p>\n
The Continental supervisor I talked with was under the impression, by
\nthe way, that I should feel no ill will towards Continental, as
\nthey’re just providing a service for “convenience”. So even though I
\nbooked the “Continental.com Hotels Best Rate Guaranteed” at the Hotel
\nI found through Continental.com, for which I could use or get
\nContinental frequent flier miles and the purchase of which was listed
\nas “Continental.com” on my credit card bill, if I am unhappy I have
\n“no right to blame them”, as the supervisor said. Of course, they
\nfully expect increased brand loyalty if everything goes well.<\/p>\n
And in response to “Are Airlines responsible for Hotels Booked on
\ntheir site?” I say yes, though they are of course not legally
\nresponsible. We’re expected to think better of the Airlines if we
\nhave a great time, but not if we don’t? I will never fly Continental
\nagain thanks to my experience with the Continental branded hotels
\nwebsite, and that is all, in the end, I can do.<\/p>\n
And a question for the crowd: If the Airlines aren’t responsible for
\nthe hotels that you book on their site, and the hotels chains aren’t
\nresponsible because you booked through the airline website, and the
\nhotel managers are only as responsible as they want to be, who always
\nends up the responsible one?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It seems pretty inconvenient and a strange cancellation policy on Super 8’s part. It’s temporally impossible to cancel the reservation after<\/em> April 28, so this is effectively a “no cancellations” policy. If the reservation can’t be canceled, why not just say so?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Booking a hotel room through an airline’s web site can lead to a roach-infested, unacceptable hotel experience, as reader Bruce learned recently. Nick tells Consumerist that he had a similar Kafkaesque hotel booking experience booking a Super 8 reservation through Continental Airlines. He learned that no one at either the airline or the hotel had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4307,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-510055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"http:\/\/consumerist.com\/assets_c\/2010\/04\/super8-thumb-240x160-38895.jpg\")
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