http://cheap-uk-hotels.com/ - Warning and advice

MarkJ

2007-09-05 20:22:48

Background:

The website http://cheap-uk-hotels.com/ offers seemingly good deals on hotels. They offered the Sofitel in Gatwick for £ 123.00 including breakfast which, at the time, was the best price available on the net. Having read their T&C's of trading, I was fully aware that the booking was just a request until such time they had confirmed it with the hotel.

Bearing this into mind, I proceeded with the booking request which included providing my credit card details so that the booking could be secured as soon as confirmed.

24 hrs after the request, I had email confirmation that they could NOT secure the booking and that no charge was made to my credit card. An alternative hotel at a cost of £ 58.00 or so was provided with the option to accept this by clicking on a link or not accepting it by leaving it as is.

What happened:

You may have guessed. Just checked my online credit card transactions and low and behold a charge of £ 123.00 was made against my account for £ 123.00

The transaction was dated the 3rd September, some two weeks after I tried to secure the booking which they could not fulfil.

I spoke to the credit card company this evening who advised me to speak to them again in the morning when the respective department dealing with such matters will be available to deal with it.

Contacting http://cheap-uk-hotels.com/ will mean me having to call their Thailand office which I'm not prepared to do.

Unfortunately (and very much unlike me) I deleted the email I received from this outfit permanently from my computer, so can't prove easily the confirmation from http://cheap-uk-hotels.com/ that they could not honour my booking request.

An office of http://cheap-uk-hotels.com/ is based in London, but no contact telephone number is provided. Searches on Google for this number are fruitless.

So a word of warning: think very carefully before making the use of http://cheap-uk-hotels.com/

Looking forward to the following information:

(1) A contact telephone number for the UK based company
(2) A way of retrieving permanently deleted email messages in Outlook 2003 from the computer system.

Mark

David

2007-09-05 22:00:30

Mark ... there seems to be a connection between Cheap-UK-Hotels.com, Happy-Discount.net and HotelDiscovery.net

There is a London address listed for Happy Discount and Hotel Discovery which is 402 Edgware Road, London W2 1ED, but no phone number is listed.

However, it may just be coincidence, but that is also the London address of accommodation representatives Keytel.co.uk and their phone number is 020 7616 0300.

David :wave

Peter of York

2007-09-05 22:27:44

Yes, these appear to be the same -

http://www.hoteldiscovery.net/

http://www.happy-discount.net/

http://cheap-uk-hotels.com/

KEYTEL INTERNATIONAL
402 Edgware Road
London W2 1ED

Tel: 020 7616 0300
Email: info@keytel.co.uk

The Keytel site has a different layout http://www.keytel.co.uk/

1 & 3 have the ABTA logo, but try as I may using all possible inputs, the ABTA search engine can't find them.

I bet they are all well known to the Trading Standards Office that covers London W2 1ED!

Don't suppose the deleted email could still be on your ISP server?

Best of luck,

Peter

gerib

2007-09-06 05:09:26

A bit like the blind leading the blind I'm afraid but I recently had computer problems and I did a system restore and it took me back to the date I wanted Iwhen all was well) I remember fiddling with an F key (not being rude) can't be sure if it was F8 or not.
Anyway, I read this on another forum today and they wrote to go to Start and click on help and support... right click on system restore and follow the instructions. Hope this helps.

Cheers Geri

wendywu

2007-09-06 08:24:46

Cant you put this back in the hands of your credit card company. This happened to me, not the taking the money out, but not being able to get me the booking. The funny thing was that i then phoned the hotel direct and got the room for the same price! I thought this was strange at the time. I cannot remember who the company was now.
I kept the e-mail stating they could not get me the room on my computer for 3 months but then wiped it off. But who is to say that they could not charge me now, i would have no proof. I suppose we should print off the e-mail, but how long to keep it for?

fwh

2007-09-06 09:08:55

I am a little puzzled about all this talk regarding deleted emails. Yahoo and Google both give unlimited storage.

A simple way to keep all these is an email account that you do not use often. Simply forward it to that account.

Anything to do with payments and such are an obvious candidate.

I have stored things for years in that way.

fwh

jethro58

2007-09-06 09:16:19

Hi not sure but have found this Restorer might help.

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

Travelling Sam

2007-09-06 09:20:24

I would contact ABTA as early as possible, explain that you booked as you felt confident that they were a member, but now you can't find them in the directory.

As inept as they may be in other areas, ABTA would take this very seriously, and certainly consider legal action against them (which they could extend to Thailand). And while you're at it forward the details to PATA, IATA as well, as they won't take it well.

Travelling Sam

2007-09-06 09:28:46

Just to add, if you book with a company not based in the UK, you are really taking a massive risk - certainly not worth it for the few pounds you are saving.

1) Your money is not necessarily secure

2) You have no comeback in the event of problems

3) Hotel rates are different for every market - i.e. if you buy a UK hotel from a Thai supplier, they might be cheaper rates for the Thai market (which will be cheaper than for the UK market). You might think you've done well, but i've heard of hotels not honouring the booking as a result at check-in.

4) As many overseas companies are not regulated, they frequently use 'Switch and Bait' methods, which I've heard many hotel managers complain about. You find your hotel really cheap, try to book it, they come back and say, 'sorry your hotel is full, but this hotel is available'. Most people believe them, and book the other hotel. But think about it for a moment. If I advertise every hotel 20% cheaper than any other company I have a great chance of getting your business. It's like very cheap (but dishonest) marketing. Always contact the hotel directly to double check before accepting any alternatives.

Have a read of this from a hotel: http://www.dmahotel.com/blacklist/

The list contains websites I've seen bandied around from this forum, but 1 imparticularly has a terrible reputation for switch and baiting.

jethro58

2007-09-06 09:29:55

ABTA may not be able to do anything if they are not members.
If they are a rogue trader cannot see why they would bother to be ABTA bonded.

jennyfrank

2007-09-06 09:41:04

As usual, good to see Ht members trying to help in all avenues of the problem. Grand lot on here! Jenny x

Travelling Sam

2007-09-06 10:23:15

ABTA may not be able to do anything if they are not members.
If they are a rogue trader cannot see why they would bother to be ABTA bonded.

ABTA will take action as the company are misrepresenting membership. It won't help Mark get his money back, but will assist in closing down a company who are quite obviously misrepresenting their membership of a number of trade organisations.

Many other people will book through the site as they believe that ABTA will give them protection & security (wrongly) and support in the event of a complaint (rightly). ABTA protects their branding strongly. This will prevent people being caught out. If they were actually ABTA members then I have no doubt that ABTA arbitration would get Mark his money back.

daveyjp

2007-09-06 10:50:24

Install Google Desktop. It indexes all your files, if you delete anything a record is still there.

I use it all the time as the search facility for e-mails is brilliant. If you don't delete it it will perform the search then you can access the e-mail in Outlook.

Sunbear

2007-09-06 11:34:55

Thanks for that Travelling Sam it just confirms what I was told by another hotel manager in Thailand about a certain company who appear on the D'MA Pavilion blacklist.

wendywu

2007-09-06 11:48:20

Thanks FWH that is a good idea about using another email account to store such important emails. See two heads are better than one!

MarkJ

2007-09-06 15:14:20

Just spoke to my credit card company who are as useful as a chocolate teapot.

I honestly thought that school holidays have finished, as the person I spoke to informed me that they are NOT jointly responsible for purchases made over £ 100.00 :roll:

Waiting a call back from one of their managers, which will now be tomorrow as they are all in a meeting :roll:

Getting nowhere quick here.

Mark

MarkJ

2007-09-06 15:24:49

A further update.

Just spoke to the London number (thanks for that David :tup) and they advised me that they don't deal with such matters and instead I had to call a number in Barcelona, Spain.

My knowledge of the Spanish language is nill and their knowledge of the English language was a little better than my Spanish but I could not get the query explained to them. This proved to be a wasted phonecall.

In the meantime, one of the managers of the Credit Card company called back (the meeting must have finished :roll:

) and she asked me to put all in writing so they can get the money back from the retailer. She also confirmed that they ARE jointly liable for any transaction over £ 100.00

I tried the recovery tool suggested earlier in the topic to no avail. All but emails can be recovered - typical :roll:

Will keep you posted.

Mark

MarkJ

2007-09-06 18:56:56

Travelling Sam,

When making the initial booking enquiry, I was fully aware of the fact that the Company was based in the Far East but was assured by the pletoria of logos on their website and the fact that a contact address was provided in the United Kingdom. With the benefit of hindsight, I should have checked the ABTA database for a valid entry under their Company name. A lesson learned for the future.

FWH,

I usually store my emails for quite a period of time. But as I was clearing out hundreds of emails at the time, this particular one was of no interest to me at the time, hence the hard delete from the hard drive. Had I known what would happen a couple of weeks later, the email would have been attached to the letter currently in the post to my credit card Company.

For those interested, I made quite some extensive posts in the USA section of the forums about my forthcoming trip to the USA/Mexico where I discussed the service of this kind of Company advertising rates that they can't fulfill.

Time has told me that this probably is a way of luring customers in, in the hope the alternative offered hotels (most probably at a higher rate than can be found elsewhere) are going to be booked.

I, for one, will not fall for this trick anymore and I hope with making this posting others will do the same.

Stay clear!

Mark

jayjan

2007-09-06 21:18:16

I am not very computer illiterate but i save any important emails onto my desktop by opening the email, click file, then save, save to desktop, either as html file or text file this works for me. hope this helps.but dont have an answer to permenantly deleted emails. cheers jayjan

Peter of York

2007-09-06 22:04:42

I don't think we've been much help to Mark, but this has been a most interesting thread.

Hope you get it sorted out Mark.

Peter

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