Beware of Hostelsclub.com!
Off Topic Chat
Just wanteded to give a warning to anyone planning to book rooms/beds through Hostelsclub.com.
I presumably "booked" two hostel beds with them on March 10. On March 11th, I received a personal notification from the Hostel, telling me that Hostelsclub.com had placed my reservation with them, although they don't even have availabilities for the reservation period. Apart from the inconvenience of not getting the beds I booked, for which I had already received confirmation (isn't that what a reservation system is for?!), Hostelsclub.com took 10 bucks from me for this "reservation", and I have been chasing down my money ever since.
Timeline...
March 11: Reported above issue to Hostelsclub.com - never received a reply.
March 17: Sent a reminder to Hostelsclub.com
March 21: Someone from Hostelsclub.com gets back to me in Swedish (which I don't understand).
March 21: Finally a reply in English. Hostelsclub.com tells me that they are waiting for a reply from the Hostel.
March 24: Sent a follow-up to Hostelsclub.com, asking what came of their inquiry. No reply.
Then I was on vacation. When I came back, I discovered that Hostelsclub.com hat done NOTHING in my absense.
April 15: I'm sending them another email - this time less courteous.
April 18: Someone finally gets back to me. They tell me that "as far as they can see", the refund was authorized weeks ago. They will double-check with the administration office.
Two weeks later, I received my credit card statement - no refund from Hostelsclub.com whatsoever, at least not between the beginning of time and April 26.
So to sum it up: Hostelsclub.com is either a scam, or a bunch of imbeciles. To me, that pretty much makes no difference, actually. All I can say is, stay away from these people. You may be able to afford the money, but hardly the time to deal with this sort of ****.
- Comments
13 years
To be honest, that sounds more like a problem with the hostel than with hostelsclub.com - the hostels themselves are responsible for updating availability so if they overbooked, thats the hostels problem.
strange that the reply was in swedish though - the site is very popular with the spanish and italians and the 'back office' requires you to set your prices in $USD and then they change the price to local currency through their own exchange rate. weird.
Hi Gordo,
Our back office is available in most major currencies, you can choose which currency you want to work in when you set up your account, or you can contact [email][email protected][/email] and have it changed at any time.
Regarding the Swedish reply, I have no idea how that happened, and I work here ;)
13 years
Hi,
As Hostel Hassles has pointed out, we have already told him at the time he decided to publish this post that we had processed his refund, as it happens, there was an overbooking due to the property in question not maintaining it's availability. Our process is very simple in these situations.
1. We contact the property to get their side of the story.
2. If we confirm their was a problem, we refund the guest.
3. We then get the the refunded deposit from the property, as it is their responsibility to provide rooms that they list on our site.Obviously Stefan has had a bad experience and we apologize for what must have been an extremely stressful situation.
Dominic | Hostelsclub.com
Hate to be rude, but this is really complete bullshit.
- You guys ignore every other email and can only be bothered if the customer does something that actually hurts (like posting a public thread). That is really sad.
- This also means that anyone communicating with you has no idea if the communication is being read, or is going directly to the trash, or is simply being laughed about.
- As for the Hostel in question... my experience with them is that they reply to emails within 24 hours. They also have a phone number. But you are claiming that it took full six weeks to NOT get confirmation from the Hostel (as in: "yes, it's true")? Get lost.
- You people really act if you have all broken fingers - typing an email must be such a pain. So that is probably why, after supposedly ****ing around with said hostel for one an a half months, you don't think the trouble is worthwhile to at least send the customer a short update? Priceless.
- And do you realize that I don't care if you've "processed" my refund, did a little rain dance with it or put it in a golden shrine - the only thing that counts is when I get the MONEY?!
Why not at least have the spine to admit that you screwed this up entirely, and the wisdom to learn something (anything?) from it.
And honestly, you can put your cheeky "extremely stressful situation" where your mouth is.
13 years
the problem is not with hostelsclub. It is responsibility of the hostel to maintain accurate inventory with hostelsclub. If you have manage to book it means hostel's inventory was not amended by the hostel itself. I've been using hostelsclub for about 3yrs with no problem.
13 years
Mate, have a chill pill.
The way your going on you'd think you had your life tied up in that booking. I almost want to send you the 10% of...?.(how much you talking about? I'm guessing less than 10$... )
Things happen when you travel, This is plainly a case where the 3rd party Booker is not at fault. Yet, they are working with you, despite your misdirected slander.
To stop you from further frustration, Might I suggest, That next time You make a booking, You do it directly with the establishment of choice.
I have no affiliation with HC, outside of a few bookings a year. But I have had some experience with professional complainers-- I also, keep my exchanges with them to a minimum, as they are repetitive, closed minded and full of drama. All of which just exacerbate a situation that is moving forward as fast as it can..
I have to say I actually sympathize with them in this case. As, In your mind even when you get the $, You'll still be blaming the wrong party.
13 years
Mate, have a chill pill.
The way your going on you'd think you had your life tied up in that booking. I almost want to send you the 10% of...?.(how much you talking about? I'm guessing less than 10$... )Things happen when you travel, This is plainly a case where the 3rd party Booker is not at fault. Yet, they are working with you, despite your misdirected slander.
To stop you from further frustration, Might I suggest, That next time You make a booking, You do it directly with the establishment of choice.
I have no affiliation with HC, outside of a few bookings a year. But I have had some experience with professional complainers-- I also, keep my exchanges with them to a minimum, as they are repetitive, closed minded and full of drama. All of which just exacerbate a situation that is moving forward as fast as it can..
I have to say I actually sympathize with them in this case. As, In your mind even when you get the $, You'll still be blaming the wrong party.
TBF he idoes have some right to be aggrieved - the hostel cocked up his booking, but HC is his contact point, so he can rightfully feel cheesed off if it's taken over 6 weeks and they still haven't resolved the issue - given him his money back! Or at least credit for a future booking...
13 years
TBF he idoes have some right to be aggrieved - the hostel cocked up his booking, but HC is his contact point, so he can rightfully feel cheesed off if it's taken over 6 weeks and they still haven't resolved the issue - given him his money back! Or at least credit for a future booking...
look , I'm sympathetic to his situation ....
If it was my fault ( as the hostel booked), He'd have his money back already or satisfaction as I'm sure you would have Rio. I do agree that he should of been sorted out by now. as Scotch said,"they are not helping themselves", But I don't know the particulars, But I refer you to post #11. and I hope his refund is forth coming.
These kind of muck-ups only happen when the Hostel does not complete their availability.
Do let us know HH how it ends.
13 years
I presumably "booked" two hostel beds with them on March 10. On March 11th, I received a personal notification from the Hostel, telling me that Hostelsclub.com had placed my reservation with them, although they don't even have availabilities for the reservation period. Apart from the inconvenience of not getting the beds I booked, for which I had already received confirmation (isn't that what a reservation system is for?!), Hostelsclub.com took 10 bucks from me for this "reservation", and I have been chasing down my money ever since.
The hostel might not have given you the whole story. They told Hostelsclub that they had availability, but they didn't have availability, and forgot to tell HC.
... telling me that Hostelsclub.com had placed my reservation with them, although they don't even have availabilities for the reservation period ...
I don't know about the situation with the delay in your refund, but what you are describing is almost definitely a hostel forgetting that they allocated beds to HC.
There is a serious problem in the hostel industry: that some of the booking engines (not Hostelsclub) are making it difficult to manage bed allocations to multiple booking engines. The hostel can't be totally blamed for this problem. It's very difficult for hostels to manage bed allocations across all the booking engines because of the technology situation.
(And yes, the part about the hostel's responsibility I understand. For what it's worth, after the experience I've had with hostelsclub.com I'm not convinced that this was the hostel's fault. In other booking systems, the availabilities were reflected properly, and that somehow suggests that hostelsclub.com may just have a more general information processing problem.)
It's the technology problem that exists in the whole industry. I won't get into it now because all hostels already know about it. :)
(If you really want to know, start here.)
I don't consider HostelManagement.com to be a "review" website for hostels (or booking engines). In my opinion, the forum should focus on business-to-business discussion about how to make hostels better and improve the hostel industry in general... so I'm going to move this post in the "off topic chat", which requires registration to view--not because it's completely off topic, but just to keep it out of Google for now until your problem is sorted out.
If you have any questions on how the technology works from the hostels' or booking engines' point of view, feel free to ask. :)
I've found that the fastest way to get customer service (in general) is to send a company a message on Twitter and/or Facebook. Everyone is watching, so companies usually reply right away...
As Soi1david mentioned, please let us know how it works out...
13 years
look , I'm sympathetic to his situation ....
If it was my fault ( as the hostel booked), He'd have his money back already or satisfaction as I'm sure you would have Rio. I do agree that he should of been sorted out by now. as Scotch said,"they are not helping themselves", But I don't know the particulars, But I refer you to post #11. and I hope his refund is forth coming.
These kind of muck-ups only happen when the Hostel does not complete their availability.Do let us know HH how it ends.
We have had experience of this (not updating Hostelclub/Hostelbookers) and getting an overbooking because of it, luckily we have always managed to sort it juggling other bookings around, however when we did make a mistake with a HW booking the onus was on us as the hostel to refund the guest her 10% deposit, and not HW interestingly enough...
It is a shame HW don't allow Backpack to automatically update the other sites as this would be very useful indeed, but understandable as they are competitors. Because of this we only put a couple of rooms of each type on HC and HB to avoid possible double bookings, and consequently get fewer bookings from them than we do HW.
I am curious for HH to update and see whether HC or the hostel themselves process his refund.
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