Booking.com (www.booking.com) has a 1.1 out of 5 rating on OK.one, based on 246 user reviews collected here. It is listed under Travel & Vacation and its reputation is poor. 96% of reviews are 1 star, a relatively high share; The business has not yet replied to negative reviews. Last updated 2026-08-10.
Refused a statutory refund for a cancelled flight – Booking.com hides behind airline policies
I booked a return trip from London to Antalya as a single booking through Booking.com. The inbound flight was cancelled by the airline, which made the entire trip pointless and forced me to buy alternative travel at my own expense.
I spent over 4 hours on chat with Booking.com, passed between agents, cut off twice, and refused to speak to a supervisor. When I requested a full refund under UK Package Travel Regulations 2018 (which entitle me to one for a cancelled package), Booking.com refused – repeatedly citing the airline's "non-refundable fare policy" as their excuse.
Their position is clear: they are not willing to comply with UK law, despite my booking being a single order number for a return journey. They have now formally refused my refund request and advised me to escalate externally.
I have now escalated to my bank, the UK Civil Aviation Authority, and will be pursuing a small claims court claim.
Do not book flights through Booking.com. If something goes wrong, they will not take responsibility – they will hide behind the airline and leave you to fight for your money alone.
It was terrible. AI customer service that wouldn't let me talk to a real person. The booking that I made didn't state that it was nonrefundable and took the money out of my account straight away. Wouldn't let me cancel. I had a hospital appointment that changed dates, Wouldn't let me change the date of the hotel. They sent generated emails with phone numbers you couldn't get through to. They don't care, they just want the 20% . Never will I book with them again.
Extremely Disappointing Experience – Poor Support, No Accountability, Endless Runaround
I rarely leave negative reviews, but my experience with Booking.com was extremely disappointing.
I made a reservation through Booking.com (Confirmation 5114439813) for 3 rooms accommodating 14 adults and 9 children at Blue Dolphin Motel in Timaru. What should have been a straightforward family stay turned into a stressful and frustrating experience due to poor communication, lack of support, and a complete absence of accountability.
Upon arrival, I spent nearly two hours at reception trying to resolve issues with my booking. I repeatedly showed my booking confirmation and explained that I had followed the correct booking process through Booking.com. During the discussion, I was informed there had been a communication failure involving Booking.com, yet no one seemed willing to take ownership of the problem or provide an immediate solution.
Travelling with a large family group that included children, this delay caused unnecessary stress and frustration. I eventually paid approximately NZ$20 extra to accommodate the full group. To be clear, the additional money is not the issue. The issue is the complete lack of accountability, poor communication, and inadequate customer service. Mistakes happen, but how those mistakes are handled is what defines good customer service.
The problems continued after the stay.
Booking.com later requested documentation for a refund review. The motel provided only a handwritten receipt. I submitted this immediately, but Booking.com repeatedly advised that it was not sufficient and requested a formal invoice. This resulted in countless emails back and forth between me and Booking.com.
At every stage, I fully cooperated and provided everything requested. Despite this, I found myself being repeatedly asked to obtain documents from the property, even though I had already done everything reasonably expected of me.
Only after extensive complaints did Booking.com finally confirm that they had contacted the property directly themselves, which is exactly what should have happened from the beginning.
I now hold a complete record of:
Booking confirmation and reservation details.
Proof of payment.
Bank transaction records.
Handwritten receipt issued by the property.
Records of the additional amount paid.
Multiple email chains with Booking.com customer service.
Requests for invoices and documentation.
Responses from several Booking.com representatives.
Records of the time spent attempting to resolve the issue.
What disappointed me most was that neither the property nor Booking.com appeared willing to take responsibility. Instead, the burden was repeatedly placed on me to resolve problems that were not of my making.
Noteworthy: The problem wasn't the accommodation itself or the extra NZ$20. The real issue was the lack of accountability. A communication failure between Booking.com and the property left a large family group waiting nearly two hours, yet I was the one left doing all the chasing, explaining, and follow-up afterwards. Customer service is tested when things go wrong, and unfortunately Booking.com failed that test.
I expected far better from a company of this size and reputation.
Based on my experience, I cannot recommend Booking.com and will seriously reconsider using the platform for future bookings.
Holday trun in to hell .
42 time phone call 2 booking.com.
Phone hang up , phone call drag out .
4 time told a full refed was coming.
Stranded in diffrent coutry with 2 kids and no were 2 stay .
500 pounds down . And no holday .
I am beyond disappointed with Booking.com. I made a reservation for August 1–2 at Embassy Suites in Sarasota, Florida, received my confirmation, and drove nearly four hours to the hotel believing everything was confirmed.
When I arrived at approximately 9:30 PM, the front desk informed me that they had no reservation under my name. According to the front desk representative, Charlie, Booking.com had never sent my reservation to the hotel. Because of that, the hotel was completely sold out and had no rooms available.
As a result, I was stranded late at night with my 9-year-old daughter and nowhere to stay. We were forced to get back into the car and drive nearly four hours back home. My daughter was exhausted, frightened, and crying, and should never have been put in that situation because of a booking company's failure.
This was more than an inconvenience—it was a complete failure of service. When customers book through Booking.com, they trust that confirmed reservations are actually transmitted to the hotel. In my case, that basic responsibility was not fulfilled, leaving a family without accommodations in the middle of the night.
I lost time, money, fuel, and an entire weekend, not to mention the stress and emotional distress of traveling with a child under these circumstances.
I will never trust Booking.com again and will strongly discourage friends and family from using this service. If you value reliability and want peace of mind when traveling, I recommend booking directly with the hotel instead.
If I could give this scam company a negative review I would!!!!! I was charged DOUBLE on their website $378 per night when the hotel was only $152. I checked out early because the hotel was horrible and was promised to be charged only $192- I have it in writing. The total stay was $750 and I was given a $250 refund. They still owe me $300. Wrote to their president etc. they are the biggest scam around! Customer service is non existent and the European Union is about to launch a class action lawsuit.
Never touch Booking.com. They are scammers!!!! The advisors were useless and did not support us at all when we tried to cancel our booking because the owner of the property did not state in his advert that the bathroom is shared and we did not have a private bathroom as we thought.
Booking.com said we could not get refund or help us. One advisor told us to travel to Warsaw go the property and call them from there! Putting our safety at risk!!
Some advisors put phone down on us! Managers were so rude and even put phone down on us!
We called over 20 times and spent over 3mths trying to get refund! The owner refused saying no cancellation! In the end 1 advisor managed to get owner to cancel our reservation. The stress caused to us and unless phone calls and time spent. Shocking rudeness! But never again will we touch Booking.Com!! BEWARE!!!!
I book a Bosta Guest House in Inverness, Scotland for two nights. When we arrived at the Guest House we found that there were no curtains in the bathroom. The bathroom window was facing a busy main road. When we contacted the managing agents for the property they assured me that they will get it sorted and by 18.00 hours they could not tell me when it will get sorted. On complaining to Booking.com customer service and providing them with photo evidence they came back saying Bosta Guest house were no willing to listen. They refunded as what they called a reward they gave me 1/10 of the cost of the original book. Booking.com is there to support the businesses and not the guests
My Brother passed away the day before my Sister was to travel to the US. I tried for 4-5 hours to communicate with booking.com but until today, have not heard back from them. The contact number is AI and the website takes you around in a circle with no way to go or get answers.
Booking.com is the worst and should not be allowed to sell ANYTHING - noone should use them
The customer service is full of amateurs. They don't understand anything, they talk back and forth. No matter how many people you talk to, they all say different things and what happens is different than what they promise. If you want to achieve something, you have to keep calling them, they are not willing to do anything on their own, even in an urgent matter. I don't recommend it to anyone. But really not!!!
I had a terrible experience booking hotels through booking.com in India. Hotels often don’t notice your booking right away, and I wasn’t sure about the booking process because I booked through Booking.com. As time went on, I had to keep writing endless WhatsApp messages to the property, and they kept saying they would confirm/cancel depending on whether I paid them directly in advance.
Getting to customer service is a nightmare. You can only use chat and you can’t reply to their emails or chat messages. You also end up talking to several different unhelpful AI agents who don’t understand the problem. The whole support journey is awful: you keep repeating yourself, and it’s never resolved properly.
I was a longtime customer but the last two years (not only with this last travel) I got so fed up, I will not book with them anymore.
I got scammed by booking.com. I trusted the platform to vet the properties it lists, especially as I needed to book quickly. The accommodation I arrived at was completely different from what was advertised. The photos were misleading, the condition of the property was unacceptable, and
I would not recommend booking through Booking.com after this experience. I trusted the platform to vet the properties it lists, especially as I needed to book quickly. Instead, I arrived at accommodation that was completely different from what was advertised. The photos were misleading, the property was in an unacceptable condition, and it appeared to be occupied by people using drugs. I was travelling with my two-year-old child, and I genuinely felt unsafe. I lost the money and I had to look with a two year old find other place to stay.
What makes this even more disgraceful is that Booking.com continues to list this property despite numerous reviews describing the same issues. They appear to be aware of the complaints yet continue to profit from bookings instead of removing misleading and potentially unsafe listings or ensuring they accurately reflect reality.
The accommodation bore little resemblance to the advertised photos or description. I paid for something that simply was not delivered. It felt like daylight robbery.
Booking.com has a responsibility to protect its customers, especially families travelling with young children. Instead, they left us in an unsafe and distressing situation. This experience has completely destroyed my trust in Booking.com, and I will never use the platform again. I strongly urge others to think twice before relying on Booking.com's listings, as my experience suggests they are not doing enough to ensure the properties they advertise are safe or honestly represented.
I accidentally booked the wrong date (which ironically ended up being the date I actually needed to stay). After a long flight from Phoenix (PHX) to Halifax (YHZ), I realized the mistake and immediately called both Booking.com, believing I had free cancellation, and the Hilton Garden Inn near YHZ.
Despite explaining my situation and that I still had another two-hour drive in the early morning, neither Booking.com nor the property showed any flexibility. Booking.com later told me they had sent a refund request to the hotel, but when I spoke with the hotel manager, I was told they never received any such request.
My experience was frustrating because I received conflicting information from Booking.com and the hotel, and no refund was provided.
My advice: book directly through the Hilton app or the hotel’s website whenever possible rather than using a third-party booking site. It may make resolving issues much easier if something goes wrong. Lesson learned.
Awful. Only when something goes wrong is a company tested and this lot have failed. A common mistake occurred with my partners email address you cannot tell me in the days now of predictive text messaging this is a unique problem, straight away we were on it, Friday night we emailed after many hours frantically searching to realise booking.com aren’t interested in making themselves readily available nor their hosts.. here we are are Monday night still with no response and we are meant to be going away this coming Thursday no idea how my partner will be able to get the access code….
Booking.💩is much more appropriate.
Totally unacceptable.
I could not check in on a flight with reference given
I could not check in on a flight with the reference number that booking . com gave me and I had to pay for another ticket. If you had less than one star that is what i would rate right now customer service is Zero.
I wouldn’t even rate them a star but I had to
I booked an apartment 7 months ago for 10 days over August summer holidays. I paid using the link on their app. The payment went through no problem. Later that day I had a reminder to pay. Turns out they hadn’t assigned the payment to my booking. Even though it was paid directly through the link they provided.
Iv spent the whole day trying to reach them. You get passed around, nobody really understands anything, they certainly don’t know how to fix it. Even with proof of bank statements they just told me to wait to hear back from the finance team. You can’t speak to this department. Most of the time you get an AI chat bot or someone who speaks poor English.
So now they have my money - £2500 and my apartment is cancelled as it wasn’t paid for. I’m stuck with flights, no accommodation and no money to rebook something else in peak summer season.
Booking com are no help. They don’t have a clue what they are doing and don’t seem to communicate between them. You have to keep repeating the same information and resending the same information over.
I’m now doing a charge back and trying to change my flights- which comes at a cost!
If zero was an option, I would leave that. I’ve used booking.com for several years but this latest booking with them will be my last. I booked a hotel and had to cancel. When I went in to cancel, I realized they never gave me a confirmation number but said my reservations were confirmed. I have tried for over a week with endless emails to them trying to get an answer. Their 800 number hangs up on you if you don’t have a confirmation number. Plus, the site tells me I’m using the wrong email address although they send me a verification code to my email address. After a couple emails I sent I receive an automated response asking for all the information I’d already given them, and all that information was in the thread of emails. One response also said they’d get back within 48 hours. I waited 72 hours and never received anything. They are based out of the Netherlands so other than an 800 number, you can’t call directly. I will never use booking.com again. I’m deleting my account. Do yourself a favor and call the hotels directly. Luckily I talked directly with a desk clerk and she was able to override booking.com’s reservation. She said they don’t even give them a number other than the one I tried with no success.
We had to cancel our reservation due to weather. Flights cancelled couldn’t get there. Booking.com would not refund the $500 deposit. They said it was the hotel but Omni says they were paid the deposit from Amex & nothing they could do. Don’t use them.
