Booking.com complaint: Booking.com ruined my family trip.

I made a reservation to the Baymont Inn in Sandusky Ohio for July 7th-8th. I saw that cancellations were non refundable. However, there was an option to change the dates instead of cancel. Right after I booked, I realized I made a mistake on the dates and clicked the area that said “change dates” for this reservation which led me to send an email to the property. A day had passed and I didn’t hear anything. I sent more emails.

Then I called booking.com customer service and the woman I talked to repeatedly said not to worry and that if the property didn’t respond in 24 hours (it had been 23 at this time) then that gave booking.com the right to go ahead and change the dates on my behalf. At least 3x, I repeated back what she told me to be sure I understood. It went something like this: “so, you are saying that in 1 hour, if the property still hasn’t responded, booking.com will change the dates and I don’t have to worry about a thing?” And at least 3x the agent ed. Two days later 5 kids and me traveled to Sandusky Ohio (a two hour drive) and arrived at the Baymont. Sure enough they said my reservation was cancelled when no one showed on the 7th.

To make matters worse , they said they were booked for the night and even if they had rooms available, they would have to charge me (again).

I called booking.com from the lobby to demand they get me another room somewhere free of charge and/or refund my money. They did neither. So I ended up spending over 400.00 dollars for one night in a 2 star hotel.