booking.com & RRT Retreat Oasis

The 5th of October was a very special day for my best friend that I hadn't seen for over 6 months, I budgeted R1500 just to take her to a nice place and relax. i made my booking online through bookings.com and paid the funds immediately, My friend travelled from far away to meet me in Pretoria for the outing, We got to the venue, which is RRT Retreat Oasis, and when we got to the gate, i phoned the number that was on the confirmation email for them to open the gate for us. The lady that answered the call was like, “Are you Mimi? We are fully booked.” That moment is around 15H00, I told her that I booked and paid and she said that she had informed Booking.com that she was fully booked so she didn’t understand how I managed to make a booking and she hung up the call on me as I was trying to understand what might be the way forward, that moment I was so frustrated. The lady did not care or let us in so we could call bookings.com to sort out the problem.

I remained at the gate like we were lost, I decided to call bookings.com, when I did they explained that the lady never informed them of anything and they apologized for this situation, they told me that I must give them 45 minutes to sort out everything which is processing my refunds and getting another place for us to stay. We remained at the gate as we waited. After 20 minutes we got a call that they needed the owner of RRT Retreat Oasis to confirm the cancellation before they proceeded and she was not answering her calls, I asked to call the lady myself and conference the call, she picked up my call and I had to listen to them play the blame game again. They asked the lady to confirm so that they could proceed and she said “ My battery is about to die so be quick”.

After she had confirmed, bookings.com processed a refund that they didn’t tell me that it would reflect in 7 days, just saw that in an email the next day. They said they could book me into another place or I could choose another place and they would cover the difference, not knowing that what they meant was, I have to pay for myself, At that moment I had no money as I was left with funds I will use to buy dinner and small things for my friends, I told them I have no funds, why can't they arrange with the hotel for payment as I have no funds? And they told me that there is nothing they can do about and that was the best they can do. My heart is so broken, and I am so disappointed as I still await my refund even now. We had to make a plan and sacrifices to get another place, which is RH Hotel and pay.

Booking.com and RRT Retreat Oasis disappointed me.