** Family holiday ruined after more…
** Family holiday ruined after more than 20 days of failed support ** Firstly, I have also left this review on GoToGate, as this is the company Booking.com is partnered with for flight bookings. Neither company seems to want to take ownership for their appalling customer service. Our family of five was due to fly with Air China on 2 August 2026 on a holiday we had spent months planning. We fully accept that we accidentally entered one passenger's name incorrectly when making the booking. One letter was missing. That mistake was ours. However, we reported it more than 20 days before departure, giving Booking.com what we believed was more than enough time to resolve such a simple issue. Instead, we experienced one of the most frustrating customer service experiences we have ever encountered. Over the following three weeks, we completed approximately 13 online chats and made around six telephone calls. We were repeatedly assured that our case had been escalated, prioritised and passed to a specialist team. On several occasions, we were promised the corrected ticket would be issued "within two hours", then "within ten minutes", then "within another two hours". It never arrived. The corrected e-ticket was never issued. The passenger's itinerary did not display correctly within Air China's system, and another passenger's date of birth was also incorrect. Despite repeatedly asking, we never received written confirmation that all five passengers held valid tickets or that we could travel together without issue. With no confidence that our family would even be allowed to board, we made the heartbreaking decision to cancel the entire holiday. This wasn't just about the international flights. The uncertainty had a domino effect on every part of our trip, including internal flights, hotels and other prepaid arrangements across multiple countries. Rearranging everything at such short notice simply wasn't financially possible. The day before departure, we formally requested that Booking.com cancel all five passengers. We were then told they couldn't process the cancellation because the booking had already been escalated and they were still waiting for the airline. In other words, their own internal escalation became the reason they said they couldn't help us. On the day we should have been travelling, my husband contacted what was presented as the formal complaints team. He was told there was no complaints process through that channel and was given an email address instead. The chat was then ended before he even had the opportunity to reply. When we emailed the address provided, we immediately received an automated response stating that the inbox does not deal with complaints. You honestly couldn't make this up. As a result, our family holiday was completely ruined. We have been left with significant financial losses, including £894 for kennel and cattery bookings and £500 for pre-booked airport taxis, alongside the loss of a holiday we had been looking forward to for months. At the time of writing, we have still not been offered a refund, compensation or any meaningful resolution. We do not want vouchers or flight credit. We simply want our money returned to the original payment method. The issue has never been the original typing error. We accepted responsibility for that from the very beginning. The issue is that Booking.com had more than 20 days to correct one missing letter, yet despite countless promises, repeated escalations and hours spent chasing updates, they failed to resolve it. Instead, we were passed between Booking.com, GoToGate and Air China, repeatedly given assurances that never materialised, and ultimately left without a functioning complaints process when everything fell apart. We have retained all chat transcripts, call records and evidence, including proof that we were directed to an email address that does not even accept complaints. We are now pursuing a formal complaint, seeking legal advice and will consider recovering our losses through the Small Claims Court if necessary. I would strongly urge anyone considering booking flights through Booking.com to think very carefully. If everything goes smoothly, you may never have an issue. But if something goes wrong, our experience suggests you could find yourself trapped between Booking.com, GoToGate and the airline, with nobody willing to take ownership or provide a solution.