Complaint Review: hotels.com

On Tuesday, Oct 15, I made a booking for a hotel in DFW for December dates and paid via Paypal as I do not like giving out my credit card to companies here and there. I prefer Paypal. After looking at my flight information, I realized I messed up and had the wrong dates (I had booked for 2 nights when I needed a 3rd night). I tried to change the reservation on Hotels.com and it gave me an error stating that I had to call them to change. So I called them, the lady on the phone was very nice and added an additional night. I explained that I paid via paypal and she said that was no problem and that I would receive a confirmation email within 2-4 hours of the changes made. 7 hours later, I hadn't received the email, so I called hotels.com back to find out why not. The extremely rude lady who couldn't even speak colloquial American style English stated that the reason why I had not received the email is because the additional night had not been charged to my card. In fact, what she stated was, "Are you sure you have enough money for this?" WHAT? Talk about insulting! I told her to cancel the whole reservation as she was incredibly rude and insulting and that I would never use hotels.com again. She snippily apologized and sent me my cancellation email. On the email it doesn't say how long it takes to get a refund, so I had to winnow through the hotels.com information to find out. Their website states that they refund with 24 hours and it can take between 3-7 days for the funds to be back in my bank account. Today, Oct 18th, I contacted hotels.com to find out when I was going to get my refund, and the (again, some non-American) lady stated that the refund was never issued because I never gave them a credit card! No, I didn't pay via credit card, I paid via paypal, so refund my paypal! She stated that they cannot refund paypal. I told her that on the website it does state that Paypal is refunded ("We will process your refund within 24 hours issued to the original payment account (credit card, debit card, PayPal, etc.). Once we have issued your refund, our customer service representatives will not know the status of your refund. Please contact your bank or credit card company in the next three to seven days for the status of your refund or credit." from their website http://service.hotels.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1110/kw/refund). I didn't like the idea of giving her my credit card information, and told her very specifically that if I see ANY charges I don't recognize, I will be suing them. She wasn't happy about that, but I don't care. So if I wanted my refund of $108, I had to give them my credit card information. Let's just see if they actually *do* refund me, or if I have to find an attorney & take them to small-claims court.

In a nutshell, I will NEVER use this company again! EVER.