When booking hotels these days, most people consult a site like trivago.com or kayak.com, which proceeds to list all of the different available rates at the same hotel on the night you want to stay there. This allows you to get the lowest price for the room you want -- or at least that's what it's supposed to do.
Unfortunately, these sites display results from less-than-honest sites, so the "bargains" you find may be full of hidden fees, catches, or stiff reservation change penalties.
But no booking site is shadier than getaroom.com.
At first glance, getaroom looks like a great thing.
For example, let's say we wanted to stay at the Hilton Hawaiian Village on Waikiki Beach, from April 4-7, 2015.
Here are the Trivago results: http://www.trivago.com/?aDateRange%5...Sitemap=false&
Not sure how long this link will work, but in case you can't see it, getaroom lists the cheapest room at $191 per night, while everywhere else charges you a minimum of $262. That's a great savings of 27.1%.
So what's the catch?
Unbeknownst to the booker, getaroom is freerolling them.
Here is getaroom's business plan:
1) Customer books room and pays up front to getaroom, with the belief that he can cancel for a full refund up to the hotel's normal cancellation period (usually 72 hours)
2) Customer receives confirmation e-mail and thinks everything is cool. BUT.....
3) getaroom doesn't actually book the hotel. They just take the customer's money and wait to see what happens with the hotel occupancy in the final few days leading up to the stay.
4a) If the hotel has a ton of open space during the final 72 hours prior to stay, getaroom purchases the room at bargain rates from a wholesaler. This is despite the fact that the customer already booked a long time ago.
4b) If the hotel is booked up or still charging a price near or above what the customer paid to getaroom, they "accidentally" book the customer at a different nearby hotel (if they can get it cheap). They will sometimes contact the customer and claim that "an IT error in our system caused this to happen". Other times they will say nothing and let the customer find the bad news out for himself when he gets to the hotel he thinks he has booked, and will tell him the truth once he calls to complain.
4c) If they cannot find a room at a comparable hotel that they can acquire cheaply from their wholesalers, they just leave the customer completely in the lurch. He shows up and finds that his "reservation" is shit, and the hotel had no idea he was coming. If he calls getaroom customer service, they rudely blame some inadvertent error, and promise a refund. Many times a refund never comes.
This BS has been going on for 5 years, and they have not been busted yet. Unbelievable.
Here is a hilarious thread from 2012 from Tripadvisor: http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic...in_Travel.html
I really suggest you read the whole thing, as it gets more and more entertaining as it goes along. Basically, while legit Tripadvisor users recount their horror stories with getaroom, tons of shill accounts appear in the thread, all singing the praises of a getaroom sales rep named "Jeremy". It is not clear whether these are getaroom employees pretending to be customers, or (more likely) actual customers who were offered some extra money off their travels if they show up in that thread and post some pre-written message.
How does the FTC not put a stop to this?
And shame on kayak and trivago for giving legitimacy to this scam site.
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Originally Posted by Hockey Guy
