Hotels.com is essentially the problem.1)last year, I booked 3 rooms for 2 week stay at a SOHO hotel in NYC. Upmarket. After check out, I went to London and on to Europe. I was unable to make any further bookings or use my reward nights. Much pain to comm with help desk, to be told my account has been blocked. No reason given. Emails over several months went unanswered. Verbally, was told that I had breached their rules. What exactly? They claim they don't have to tell me. So 7 rewards hang in the balance. I tried again at the beginning of 2024. Still no joy. In the mean time, I'm travelling, using bookings.com. I have a six week trip in Europe starting end of July, so 2 months ago, I start hassling again. This time, I'm told they have no record of my account having been blocked. While on the phone to an agent, I make a booking, and cancel it successfully. I breath a sigh of relieve. All is in order. Only hiccup now, is all reward nights will lapse on 14 July, if I don't make & stay in an "eligible" property before that date. My browser has all my details saved so I don't need to log in each time. I proceed to make a booking, I enjoy a night out of town that wasn't really needed, but I did it to keep the 7 nights of fairly valuable rewards active. A week has gone by, I'm closer to the expiration date. I check my account, no new stamp, and still a warning note about the deadline of 14th July. Finally contact an agent on the chat... I'm told I made the booking using a guest account? How can that be... the booking is easily located in the "past trips" folder under my personal profile... oh that may be the case they say, but because the guest account used the same email address as "my account", but it doesn't count as a night, won't earn a stamp nor will it cancel the expiry. That's kind of like being half pregnant. the first part of the "booking" is done by the guest account, but the second part is reflected in "my account". Almost two of hours of a consultant who can't see the idiocy of her explanation, won't acknowledge that there is zero way for me to determine a "guest acc" versus "my account", won't acknowledge the expectation is that an email address, once registered to an active profile, cannot be used by another Profile - guest, temporary or otherwise. Oh, and while said agent was trying to resolve my issues, which essentially amounted to repeating herself then suggests that the best way to resolve my issue is to close all browser windows, delete the cache but keep the chat window active. DUH! That sure is some kind of magic! So should I be surprised that they think that it's ok to reflect past trips on my profile but won't acknowledge them in any meaningful way, thereby creating a scenario where the rewards are yet again in jeopardy, and claiming it is ALL my fault.
