AGODA EXTREME LACK OF CUSTOMER SERVICE AND TAKING EXTRA MONEY
***Amended stars from 1 to 4 only due to the assistance I received on the phone with Avril today. She understood me being upset and extremely frustrated and also came up with the same calculations of price I did. She took the time to get the price fixed and my booking paid. Avril is an asset to AGODA, since I couldn't get any customer service wuth anyone else prior to today. Thank you Avril for your help understanding and assistance you gave. ⚠️ WARNING: Agoda's Double 5% Surcharge Loophole & Customer Support Disgrace Beware if you choose the "Pay Later" option on Agoda and try to settle your bill early using their "Pay Now" feature! I recently booked a room and explicitly used my Australian Bank card—which has absolutely zero international transaction or currency conversion fees—specifically to avoid bank markups. However, when I went into the app to use "Pay Now" to lock in my payment before check-in, Agoda’s payment gateway automatically slapped an extra 5% surcharge on top of the 5% fee that was already factored into my original booking total. They are literally double-dipping and charging two separate 5% markups! This isn't a bank fee; it is an artificial platform markup hardcoded into Agoda's system that changes the final price you contractually agreed to at checkout. To make matters worse, if you try to fight it, their customer service is an absolute nightmare. The automated chatbot runs you in circles and will eventually block or throttle your account from reaching a live person entirely. If you manage to email them with clear screenshots proving the price inflation, their front-line support staff completely ignore the proof and just send back generic, useless copy-paste scripts. My advice to anyone using this platform: Screenshot your original price and watch your card totals very closely. Once they lock your booking in, they completely refuse to let you talk to a human to fix their system overcharges and treat you with a complete lack of respect. They don’t treat their customers as customers at all. Avoid this platform if you want your agreed price honored!