Underhanded on Line Booking Fee

<p>I needed to book holiday accommodatiion for 4 nights over Christmas in Decemeber which is high holiday season and used a few sites including Airbnb. Most booking sites advise applying for multiple properties due to high demand and lack of availability. Which I did. </p> <p>After a week of consistently trying and being told that all the properties that I app**** for were unavailable or only available for longer bookings, I app**** on Airbnb for a coastal home. I noted the cost per night and then the total amount which looked about right - I was by now very tired of trying to book and becoming desperate so readily admit to payng less attention to the total than I should have. I then got a response from the owner at approximately 9am on Thursday 03 Nov 2016 saying that he could only confirm the booking the following week as he had tentatively reserved the house for a relative. There was thus no rush to cancel. </p> <p>A little later in the same day at around 12h30 , I was offered another property by another of the booking sites and went ahead and confirmed that property. I went onto the AirBnb site to cancel the coastal house enquiry, only to discover that the owner had again mailed me at about 11am that same morning and said that he had decided to accept my booking. AirBnb immediately charged the full rental amount to my credit card. </p> <p>I was rather astonished because I had been told to only expect a response the next week. So I went onto the site to try to cancel which I eventually did. It was then that I discovered that AirBnb would refund the full rental amount but not a booking fee in the amount of R1976. This was the first I knew of a booking fee, which is a unique feature of AirBNb compared to the other booking sites, never mind a non-refundable booking fee. This info is buried deep within the terms and conditions on the AirBnb site. </p> <p>R1976 for a booking that shouldnt have happened until the following week according to email corrsspondence and which was cancelled withn 2 hours. </p> <p>I was furious as the booking fee is not prominently displayed on the site as required in terms of CPA and is in fact only shown within the total amount quoted for the booking</p> <p>And then the fun began. Absolutely no way to contact Air BnB on the site. No telephone number or email address, only FAQs and drop down menus. So I took to Facebook. My compalint was not shown on the Facebook page but I got a message to say that the adminitrators were checking the content.</p> <p>A consultaant mailed back to say that the booking fee is absolutely non-refundable but that they would offer me a voucher to use in future. This does not suit me as I seldom make use of booking sites. I wanted my money back, especially in the circumstances. </p> <p>And so I finally had an email address at last. I wrote back protesting as I seldom use booking sites or AirBnb and said that I believed them to be in breach of our Consumer Protection Act. The repsonse was another mail, very polite and schmaltzy, but saying that the matter was closed and that they would not enter into any further correspondence.</p> <p>I am most aggrieved and not at all satisfied. The fact that they charge a booking fee and specifically what that fee is and how it is made up, is certainly not displayed on the ads for each of the various properties. </p> <p>I also believe that I was ambushed becasue the property was booked when I had been specifically told that it would not be confirmed until the following week. I was charged about 2 hours after being told by the owner that they could only confirm the booking the following week and so I went ahead and booked another property that was available on a differnt booking site. </p> <p>Consumers need to be warned of this chicanery . </p>