Complaint Review: Get A Room or Getaroom Hotel Booking

This business' operations are a very underhanded grift. On October 15, I signed into my Hilton honors account to book a room more than a month out into the future (Nov 21-30). At one point during the transaction, I noticed that after entering my check-in and check-out dates, at the top of the screen it said "sign in" , again. I thought this was odd, seeing as how I had just signed in, only moments before. But I signed in, again, and I completed the transaction, thinking the cost seemed too high, and I never had the opportunity to enter my corporate discount code I was eligible for for the stay.

When I got the confirmation email, I suddenly realized my transaction had been hijacked by a third-party entity. The email was from hotel values.com but the number provided lead to "Get a Room". As I said before, thought it seemed very high at $2790.93, even for a 9 night stay, so I called Hilton directly and they said that it was a "third-party reservation"  and they could not see the charge for it. I reported what I believed to be a cyber security breach on their website. I also asked them what the price for that same room woukd have been with my corporate rate. They told me it would have been $2166.50. That's a difference of over $600 !!!

They said they were not able to cancel the reservation booked through "Get A Room" from their end and told me to do it through Get A Room, directly.  So I called the number provided in the email. Get A Room refused to cancel and refund the $2790. They kept saying it was the hotel's fault. But when I got a hold of someone in upper management at the specific hotel where I was going to be staying, she said that Get A Room were the ones withholding the funds until the day of the booking check in, at which time the funds would be remitted to the hotel.

I told the hotel that Get A Room was blaming the hotel for the inability to refund me and denied having the money Then the case got escalated and the right people at Hilton began to fight for me. They contacted this bogus third-party booking entity and were initially told that they couldn't find my reservation. Then after confirming with me those reservation and confirmation numbers, as well as the credit card used for them, Hilton contacted Get A Room again, at which point Get A Room said that the reservation had been canceled, and per their policy, there were no refunds.

Mind you, this is for a booking that's more than one month out in the future. So, the hotel contacted Get A Room again and had to relentlessly escalate the matter until Get A Room submitted a ticket for "Request of Penalty Waiver" and told my hotel reps that I should see the refund within 5 business days, and if I don't, to contact the hotel general manager again. 

I believe that Hilton will do right by me and (I hope) that Hilton will also stop allowing Get A Room to access and book any reservations for them again. This has cost me several  hours on the phone as well as the nauseating feeling of having been violated and taken advantage of by opportunistic, sophisticated crooks. I'm glad that Hilton is aware of the cyber security breach happening when people are signed into their Hilton accounts. I recommend anyone wanting to book a hotel these days to call the actual hotel of their stay- directly -confirm with the person you're speaking to that they are at the actual location where you want to stay and have them verify what the address is.

I don't think the Internet is safe anymore. these kinds of third-party entities are like pirates lurking out there. They are shameless and unremorseful thieves.