I’ve been using booking.com for years, without issue. This year I used them for hotel, car hire and taxi bookings and had nothing but problems, I will NEVER be using booking.com.Firstly, upon arriving at the car hire company, I found out many of the fees were not included (despite booking.com saying they were), for example, the one-way drop off fee. So I had to pay a lot more money upon picking up the car, which ended up making it more expensive then if I’d booked directly with the car hire company. I challenged this with booking.com and received a rubbish response - they couldn’t be less interested if they tried.Second, I pre-paid for a non-refundable room in Salzburg back in January, upon arriving at the hotel in June, they hadn’t received payment from booking.com and told me the only way to check in was for me to pay them (again)! I had a screaming 6 month old baby in the reception area, and just wanted to get into the room. I called booking.com at a charge of €1 per minute, to be advised the queue time was at least 30 minutes. Eventually the hotel staff took pity on us and allowed us to check in without payment. I filed an online report with booking.com and it was eventually resolved (by them sending the money to the hotel) 2 days later. A very stressful and unnecessary experience. No apology from booking.com of course.Thirdly, we used booking.com taxi pick up service from Malta airport, as our flight arrived late. I was sent instructions saying the driver would be waiting in arrivals with our name in a board. Guess what - no drive to be seen! The number booking.com provided for the taxi company didn’t work, neither did the supposed mobile number for the driver! Another taxi driver kindly offered to help and knew the taxi company, so called them on his phone for us. They advised the driver had attended and then left 15 minutes after our flight had landed (we weren’t even off the aircraft)! I had provided our flight details AND our flight arrived 20 minutes early! They initially refreshed to send another driver, telling me to call booking.commas it was ‘their issue’, but again I put my foot down and they eventually agreed to send another car. Wed now been waiting in arrivals for an hour. The car arrived, which was tiny and required some expert Tetris skills to fit the luggage, baby and passengers in! We eventually got there, but again - NEVER AGAIN!I used booking.com to make my trip less stressful, it had to complete opposite effect.
