Cancelation fee on a unsuccessfully booked room
In April we booked a Hotel for our vacation in Greece in June. The booking took place on the hotel's website. We decided to pay immediately and not have the classical "make a reservation that you can cancel until a week ahead"-type of booking. That way we could save a few bucks.
After having submitted the form, the Hotel approached us via mail,the payment did not work out. They asked us to send them our credit card information in plain text. I was somewhat reluctant, since this is not a secure way of transferring sensitive data. So I asked them whether they could cancel the booking and we just try it once more with another credit card via the website. They refused. So we sent them the credit card data via mail. They still could not book (we did not receive any notification from our bank about some sort of denied request). So we sent them my girlfriend's credit card information. No response, upon request they claim the booking was once more unsuccessful.
Next they ask us to transfer money via bank deposit. We refuse since we lose some control over the process, apart from hefty fees for international bank transfers. And somewhat everything looks very fishy and untrustworthy to me.
That's why we asked them now to cancel the booking altogether. They want to charge us a cancelation fee. I find this an absolute disgrace.
Am I wrong or are they wrong? The hotel is olive green in Crete BTW.
Best Answer
Do not pay them anything. I doubt that they will try to charge you because they know it's their fault that you cancelled.
Threatening them that you will write your story (along with a low rate review) in Tripadvisor or booking.com might convince them to cancel your booking right away.
Pictures about "Cancelation fee on a unsuccessfully booked room"
How to cancel or modify a hotel reservation without paying penalty fees
More answers regarding cancelation fee on a unsuccessfully booked room
Answer 2
A badly designed booking system (no possibility to change payment method, no checking if credit card is valid before booking) doesn't change the fact if you owe something to hotel or not. We can only speculate if Greek law consider online transactions binding if no payment was made - it's a legal question. In Germany, such construct exists. Greece is in EU too, so it's likely it's the case.
We can speculate if the hotel would care or not to try to enforce you paying them. Maybe yes, maybe no. It's like with parking fines or fare dodging. Even if it's unlikely they will sue you, they can submit you to some local blacklist operators and you can find yourself unable to rent a car or even kayak. Getting out of such lists is a hard job, especially if they are operated unoficially by private entities. Better safe than sorry.
You should negotiate with the hotel to find a solution. From their point of view, you tried to scam them by presenting invalid credit card data. Maybe you use some local provider instead of globally accepted (VISA/Master). Maybe CVV is required. Maybe your bank don't accept transactions from Greece. We don't know, they don't know. If they got scammed many times, they'll likely assume your badwill.
The best solution will be if they accept you paying cash on arrival. It's not very likely they will accept if you already escalated (they assume you are not going to arrive). Bank transfer would be probably the most reasonable solution. It is the most reliable, even if the most expensive. Next time look for hotels accepting cash on arrive or paypal. It's not safe to assume your credit card will work abroad, if you haven't tested that before.
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: Pixabay, Pixabay, Karl Solano, John-Mark Smith