Trusting this website nearly ruined my wedding …
This website nearly ruined my wedding because I trusted them. The website said that an offer of 20 rooms expired in 5 days. I answered within that time frame, and then the hotel tells me that they sold half my rooms. They pointed at Skipper, saying that they were unable to reach anyone or find a way of getting in touch with me. Skipper suggested that I didn't respond quickly enough, though nothing about the messaging within the process indicated that. Here is how this played: Skipper: Enter your desired dates and numbers. Me: Wait Skipper: Here are some offers. You have five days to accept. Me: 3 days later, accept the Holiday Inn offer Skipper: Great, they are drafting the agreement! (btw, nothing is final until you sign the final offer) Me: thinking.. alright, I assume they need to get in touch with me.. ask about pets and so forth to figure out their "final offer" No indication or feeling that they might withdraw the offer they have accepted. (apparently this is when Holiday Inn sold half of my rooms) Me: waiting... 5 days go by and I get nervous. Me: I independently call Holiday Inn and they tell me that they have sold half my rooms. Skipper: haha oh yeah, that happens sometimes! You should take it Me: ... panic attack I don't know if I have any kind of recourse at this point. I'm left in a very bad place, scrambling to take care of the people I love most in my life attending my most important life event over a busy holiday weekend. I am reaching out to all of my connections at this point to find alternative lodging for my loved ones, but I have no intention of working with either Skipper or this particular hotel for my event. I would sooner carpet my house with air mattresses. The messaging of the website was quite misleading. It was absolutely never clear that this might be a possible result, especially after an offer is accepted. Frankly, I would never have depended on Skipper in the first place if I had realized that the offers are entirely meaningless and nonbinding. I hope this review saves one other person from the situation I'm now in. Re: Skipper's response While I certainly appreciate that there is an apology from Skipper.. I have to say it doesn't really change the situation or the course of events. Even if an event is rare, if it's possible at all, it's the responsibility of the business to convey that to the customer _during the process_. The hotel certainly also owns a fair amount of the blame here. They should have held onto my rooms for the entire period that they designated as their expiration time for the offer. None of this changes my review, I have to say. (I didn't respond to the email for that reason... there was simply nothing else to be said). By trusting this third party website, my event was nearly ruined. I have learned my lesson to always work directly with the vendors that I need, and I hope that others take my tale as cautionary and do the same. Even if you get an accepted offer from Skipper, you MUST reach out to the hotel and confirm independently because the process does have holes in it which are not made clear in Skipper's process. Perhaps Skipper will respond to this with more than an apology, and they will additionally provide a prompt/suggestion within their interface to prevent this from happening to their customers in the future. I personally hope so, since the stakes are so high.