“We are now stuck in a communications abyss”

Technology can be a helpful tool for the traveler, or it can be the tool of the devil. In Cindy Lammert’s case, it’s definitely the latter. Her recent online booking at the Sofitel Munich Bayerpost through the Accor site got so screwed up that no phone calls or emails could fix it.

“We are now stuck in a communications abyss, with no resolution, no place to stay, and a $550 bill,” she told me.

How did she get drawn into this vortex? Is there any hope for her? And how can you avoid the same thing?

Let’s start at the beginning.

Lammert explains,

On Aug. 15, I used the Accor website to book the Sofitel Munich Bayerpost, inserting the dates for our two night stay (October 7-9).

A favorable rate for a (splurge) junior suite came up, and I entered my credit card information for the non-refundable price. Upon printing the reservation confirmation for our files thereafter, I noticed that the website had automatically shifted the dates of the two night stay to what were presumably the next available dates (October 15-17). Of course, these were not the dates that I entered.

Whoa. Shifted the dates? How can that happen?

Well, I’m not entirely sure, but I do know that this isn’t the first time I’ve heard of date-shifting. Sometimes, browsers and sites interact in a funny and unintended way. Anyway, on with the story …

I immediately searched for e-mail and phone numbers for the hotel. I called Germany and spoke to two individuals at the hotel who ultimately said that they could not help me to change the date or cancel the reservation. They directed me to the Accor and Sofitel websites, as Accor apparently books for Sofitel.

I sent a message to Accor immediately as well and received no response at all. I was advised by Sofitel that there is no availability for the dates intended, and I was told to pursue the issue with Accor online. I e-mailed Accor directly and did not receive any response. In the last e-mail requesting assistance with contact information, I never got a response from Sofitel.

I have disputed the bill with my credit card company and cancelled the reservation since it appears that there is no availability on the dates that I need (and so that the hotel can re-book the rooms). Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Why the runaround? Why can’t the hotel just cancel her reservation and rebook her on the nights she meant to be in Munich? If I had to guess, I’d say there’s a company policy that forbids the hotel from modifying a reservation made through the corporate site, and that may make perfect sense from a company perspective. (Sofitel is managed by Accor.) But not from a customer’s point of view.

Many hotel reservations booked online are non-refundable, so it’s possible that Sofitel’s refusal had something to do with the terms of Lammert’s room. Is that a good enough reason to force a customer to pay $550 for a room she won’t use? No, not if the booking was an honest mistake. The error was brought to the hotel’s attention immediately. There should be some flexibility.

I contacted Accor on her behalf. Here’s the response she got from a manager at the Sofitel Munich Bayerpost:

I am writing to you regarding the problems you encountered when booking your stay with us via the Accor website from October 7 – 9, 2010.

First of all, I want to make sure that you know that the handling of your complaint with the reservation department was insufficient from our side and that we want to apologize for the inconvenience caused by this.

The rate you received with the initial booking was for a different period than the rates we have from October 7 – 9, 2010. That being said, we now offer you preferential rates for the Junior Suite for 299 € (official public rate 379 €) or a Superior Room for 214 € (official public rate 269 €).

Of course you would be welcome as a VIP guest.

Looking forward to receiving your feedback!

I love a happy ending.

But how do you avoid the shifting dates. Use a standard Web browser, like Internet Explorer, for which most sites are optimized. Be sure to double-check your dates when you make a reservation, particularly on a European site where the date format is different. And always read the confirmation as soon as you get it, to make sure you received the dates you reserved.

If you didn’t, here’s hoping you can avoid the abyss.

(Photo: tanaka who/Flickr Creative Commons)

  • Anon

    Dear Chris:

    Internet Explorer stopped updating for Macs back in 2005. Please please please don’t suggest to your Mac users that they download that particular program!

    I would recommend that Apple users try Firefox – what I’m currently using – or Google Chrome. (More information found here: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp)

    Only rarely do I find sites that don’t function correctly in Firefox.

  • Christopher Elliott

    Good point. I use a Mac, and have both Chrome and Firefox installed.

  • David Emery

    >Use a standard Web browser, like Internet Explorer, for which most sites are optimized

    Was there any information in here that I missed indicating which browser version was used?

    Which version of IE are web sites optimized for? IE’s been a big mess for years, with multiple versions causing incompatibilities that cause web designers a lot of problems. Much better to stick with Firefox, which has much better support for standards.

  • Thalassa

    The OP’s letter said: I was advised by Sofitel that there is no availability for the dates intended, and I was told to pursue the issue with Accor online.

    Am I correct in understanding that now, room has magically appeared?

    Good job, Chris!

  • Len

    Up until a week ago, I would have been suspicious about claims of “date shifting.” I attempted to book a domestic flight on the website of a major US air carrier. I entered all the data correctly, with my wife looking over my shoulder, completed the transaction, and printed the confirmation.

    Fortunately, I checked the confirmation and lo and behold, the dates were not what I entered. I contacted the carrier by telephone and was told to go back to the website and cancel the reservation (even though this was a non-refundable ticket.) I couldn’t believe it, but the site actually allowed me to cancel the ticket. In my case, all’s well that ends well, but the larger lesson is, ALWAYS read the confirmation immediately.

  • Dang

    I work for IT for the last 30 years and we support every platform: Windows, Linux, Unix, AIX, Sun etc.. . I can tell MS IE have the biggest part of the market but it’s the worst product of the browsers. Of course, other products or websites program their applications upon the one who have the biggest part of the market. Other browser than IE work with less resource, more secure and better performance.
    I think the problem of Cindy if more a problem of Date Format. May be the website is not clear enough about Date Format. I remember the German and the Swiss has the following date format dd.mm.yyyy (Day Day dot Month Month dot Year Year Year Year). Myself, sometimes have difficulty to book on Swiss Int’l website.

  • Mel

    Glad this worked out for the OP. Last year when preparing to visit Las Vegas, I made hotel and flight reservations together via Orbitz and clicked July 20th arrival and I *thought* July 28th for my return. Didn’t even realize that the return date calendar was for the month of August, not July. Went to check in online for my flight the night before and about had a heart attack! The hotel was very understanding about cancelled the remainder of my MONTH LONG reservation. Naturally, although the airline reservation clerk I spoke with enjoyed a good laugh (and commented that this was a common problem, hmmmm)….he still charged me the change fee, but since it was my boneheaded error (with maybe a little help from Orbitz), I paid cheerfully. Now, you can be assured I manually enter all dates instead of clicking a day on their calendar and then double-and-triple-check EVERYTHING before hitting that final purchase button!

  • Chuck

    When it comes to a Non-Refundable booking I’m very very very careful. I have screwed up booking a room on priceline.com (the opaque site) but it was my fault so I ate the charge. Fortunately it was only one night at a Fairfield Inn.

    Also I have to agree that I.E. can be psychotic. I sometimes use MULTIPLE browsers before signing in and sealing the deal.

  • Roberto

    Every single travel website I’ve ever used presents the user with a confirmation screen prior to the final purchase being made. The page instructs the user to verify all of the details before confirming the purchase. I strongly suggest you do that.

  • Pplaresilly

    Vortex dissolved – Abyss dismissed – Nice work!

  • http://www.dmuth.org/ Douglas Muth

    First, I too am glad it worked out well for the customer.

    Now, as a web developer with about 11 years experience, I too would like to chime in on the comment about MSIE being a “standard”. I’m sorry, but it’s not. The current specifications for HTML4/XHTML/HTML5 are incredibly complicated, and it takes a major feat for any browser maker to implement them all to work 100% of the time in 100% of the cases. Making it an even bigger challenge is the non-zero number of programmers out there that don’t know what they are doing, use outdated tags (remember the FONT tag? It’s since been deprecated, but people still use it.), etc.

    Don’t even get me started on Javascript.

    Here’s a little test anyone can do. Point your browser to http://acid3.acidtests.org/ to get an idea of how compliant it is. Firefox 3.6.8 on my machine scores 94/100. Google Chrome scores a perfect 100. Opera 10 also scores a perfect 100.

    Internet Explorer 8? For me, it scored a paltry 20/100, and that was after throwing at least one Javascript error.

  • http://www.talestoldfromtheroad.com Dick Jordan

    I just returned from Ashland, Oregon (home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival) where I stayed at the Lithia Springs Resort. While chatting with one of the staff I learned that the inn was unable to make changes to reservations that its guests had booked using the third-party site BedandBreakfast.com. Instead, the guests would have to re-book directly with the inn and then contact BedandBreakfast.com and cancel the original reservation and ask for a refund made through that service.

    I think the moral of this story (and the one Chris has related) is that travelers should know before they book rooms, flights, rental cars, or other travel services on-line, who they must contact to make a change in or cancel a booking.

  • Mike Z

    I have actually had this almost happen to me. I was trying to find a hotel and the dates I put in were changed when the prices came up. There was a little disclaimer that also showed up in red that basically said the nights you requested are unavailable, but these nights are available, and here is the rate. This was several years ago however.

    I have searched for available flights from some airlines and they do the same thing. You put in one date and it will show a bunch of flights, most on that date, but some on other dates in case you apparently want to travel on a different date. I particularly like this idea as when I travel to Vegas I normally look for the cheapest airfare and plan my hotel stay around that. Why pay $400 for R/T tickets when you can leave and return two days later and save $150? More cash for the tips!

  • Needs a Vacation

    To Douglas Muth who suggested:
    – Here’s a little test anyone can do. Point your browser to
    – http://acid3.acidtests.org/ to get an idea of how compliant it is. Firefox
    – 3.6.8 on my machine scores 94/100. Google Chrome scores a perfect 100.
    – Opera 10 also scores a perfect 100. Internet Explorer 8? For me, it scored a
    – paltry 20/100, and that was after throwing at least one Javascript error.

    Why doesn’t anyone suggest Safari, which is the standard Mac browser? It scores 100/100 on your acid test– better than Firefox, which scored only 93/100. I use Firefox when I must, but I much prefer Safari.

  • Bill

    Here we go with browser wars – on Mac use Safari, and IE 8 or greater is just fine. I use it every day, with very few, if any, problems. Actually I’m going to say no problems.

    I notice on Marriott’s site that if you make a mistake on the “prepaid non refundable” reservations, you have a day to change it before you’re committed. So maybe you are dealing with the wrong hotel company for one thing.

    All of the websites I use do come up with confirmation screens. I’ve screwed up twice. Once, the cost was a little over $100, I just absorbed the fee. Another time, I called right away and got Expedia to fix it. Both times were my fault.

  • Jason

    I have seen date shifting in the past during on-line booking. And I did not use IE. I was able to cancel incorrectly booked reservations in the past. Also I had experience with a priceline when I booked a hotel in Washington DC and after the booking was completed the website asked if I want to add a car for $10 per day. I said ok and after doing its thing I’ve got the car at DCA but I was flying into BWI. I did not recall there was a prompt to select the airport. I called priceline immediately and they cancelled the reservation without problems.

  • Robert

    I doubt it’s funny browser interactions. I think it’s just sloppy programming and user experience design; some idiot decided the right thing to do when there’s no availability is to just change the dates instead of OFFERING very loudly to change the dates.

    I’ve seen the same kind of thing. I was making a hotel reservation on marriott.com and the calendar display on the check-out date magically shifted over a month once I chose a check-in date. It took me a while to figure out why the rooms were so colossally expensive.

    There’s really no excuse for website design that is this sloppy. Errors like these are very basic and would be caught with even rudimentary user testing.

  • Salami

    Just verify everything every time you book anything. And then double check it. And then log into the site again to check that the reservation took.