Booking.com complaint: Transferred from original booked accommodation @ 81 Newport Boulevard

Please see email sent to the ownercaretaker of the property with booking number: 2149576386

Hi,

Good day to you. I would like to let you know that I am not particularly happy with the way our booked accommodation with you has turned out to be. Why? Me and my family were booked to stay at C1 9A originally when I paid for our stay but it turned out to be that on the daynight of our check in someone was already occupying the property according to the guard on duty which I wasn’t told about. I contactedrang the contact person for the property around 13 times but it was unreachable, spending about 45 minutes doing so. So I left a message through this email link (booking.com) to call my sister’s number to reach me as I don’t have a local PH number just yet. Someone with a different contact number rang me back after a while to explain the situation. During the course of our conversation I was told that we are now to going to be staying at C1 5D, did read an email thereafter that our room allocation has indeed changed but I wasn’t able to read it because we were travelling from London to Manila Philippines. Also, informed by the guard that there is no allocated parking as the space has now been taken by the person using our originally booked unit. Told instead to park somewhere else and to be refunded for my parking fee.

Seeing the second unit that we were allocated to stay. The roombeds was completely different from what I am expecting from when I booked the unit. Originally according to your description, the unit I booked has 2 double beds, 2 single beds and 1 single in the living room (deluxe double studio), 9th floor Cluster 6 unit A. When we enter the unit at C1 5D, what inside is 1 double bed, 1 foldable foam bed on the floor and 1 single foldable foam bed on the floor. This is completely different from the description when I booked your unit at 9th floor Cluster 6 unit A. I did not protest on how the room has turned to be because me and my family are all tired and has been travelling for nearly 24 hours. All we need on that moment is a place to stay and rest frustratingly annoyed as I may have been.

I see and suspect an element of trickery here in a sense that the lockbox key (0826) you’ve given us after I booked the unit was for C1 5D and not for the 9th floor Cluster 6 unit A. Again, I want to reiterate that I am frustrated and not happy with things have turned out to be. I will be re-pasting and forward this email to Booking.com when I made my complain to them. If you look back at the previous correspondences, involved units are C1 9a, 9th floor Cluster 6 unit A and the unit we are currently staying C1 – 5D. I don’t have local PH mobile number just yet so please contact me through this email communication channel.

Thank you so much.

Alberto Domingo
Client

This is the reply I got from the unit ownercaretaker:

I’m sorry for this mix up. We are new to booking.com and still learning the calendar. Also it just reopened after the covid lockdown. They just started allowing airbnb in our building. So in order to cover our mortgage we tried doing airbnb. We are still trying new ways to not get confused with bookings. Just hours before your arrival one guest inadvertenly booked and would like to cancel so I called airbnb ,(took me 4 hours to fix,)just to help a guest get a full refund without them getting penalized. Unfortunately the lady who was helping me canceled the wrong guest leaving a slot open for booking. Another booking came through. Then more things to fix. I also have a work as a nurse and got only 2 hours of sleep then I notice that i got your pre-approval letter
wrong which we can only do during office hours . It’s already too late. Then the guest asked me to use the parking and I said yes when the other parking is close till the 16th because my brother used it.