Wonky But Ultimately Worth It
Agoda was able to beat Priceline, Hotwire, and the other booking sites on price by quite a bit after factoring in taxes and fees. From what I can tell they charge little or no fees, plus have great promo codes and bonuses for future bookings. The app works fine but if anything goes wrong with your booking, things can get dicey. Calling customer support often results in their automated system hanging up on you or not recognizing your booking ID number. Once you do reach a live person, somewhere in Asia, the phone connection is terrible, the agent's accent thick, and you'll have to endure considerable background noise from other agents. It's slower but using email is a less frustrating means of dealing with Agoda customer support. Despite all my frustrations of dealing with customer support, in the end, Agoda has gone above and beyond what any other booking site has ever done and refunded my payment on non-cancellable reservations in which either I or their system had made an error in booking.