I booked flights straight after the hotel and am now worried sick. I asked to speak to a manager and was told no one was avail

Knowing that you had no booking number at the time your PC froze, to then book the flights was a bit risky.

I once experienced a situation in a petrol forecourt shop that might be similar to your case (stay with me here).

I saw a cleaning product on the shelf, noted the price on the shelf-edge label and went to the till. The item was then priced somewhat higher. I demanded the lower price and the shop refused. I left, rang trading standards and was informed that the shop was within it's rights to refuse to sell to me at the lower price.

Your case is slightly different in so far as you offered the requested amount of money, it was removed from your account and only afterwards was the price mistake spotted.

I would check with your local trading standards office (usually accessible via citizens advice bureau) and seek their opinion. If WSH are within their rights to retract from the contract then you'll have no redress for the flight costs. Even if they must honour the contract you still have no redress for the flight costs - but would not obviously need to then cancel or change them.

Have you asked how much extra WSH require for the accommodation? You might just have to take the extra on the chin as the time taken to solve this might extend beyond the flight departure date.

Do please let us know the answer from Trading Standards though as this would be extremely useful knowledge for future.

Mike

Please follow Mike's advice- he knows what he is talking about. In the meantime why not post on the DIY forum about the accomodation you are looking for and perhaps one of our member will be able to get you someone else to book through.

Kat

I think I would be inclined to partially agree with Mike on this one. As your booking appeared to fail and no confirmation number was given, I personally would not have continued any further until I was sure of what had happened and the state of play on my booking.

I'm not sure whether it would be of any comfort to you, but I and others on this board have also had to contact WSH's customer service for one reason or another, and been pleasantly surprised by their willingness to help.

Stick at it and let us know how things progress.

Jazz

I'm not sure whether it would be of any comfort to you, but I and others on this board have also had to contact WSH's customer service for one reason or another, and been pleasantly surprised by their willingness to help.

Jazzman don't you have connections with Wintersunshine? Perhaps you can help the member sort this mess out.

Glynis,

Connections? lol you make it sound like the Mafia.

No not exactly, I promote their website on my review website Room2Choose as I do Alpharooms, Expedia and other accommodation providers.

Jazz

I think WSH do have problems with payments on their website. We are off to Spain in a couple of weeks and I recently tried to pay the balance to them and the system froze up on me as well.
I rang them next day and the system hadnt registered my payment so they did it over the phone. Think they may have a problem that they need to investigate.
if I remember rightly the boss of the company is a member of HT so he might pop up again and offer an explanation.

I have been trying to price up accommodations on their new style web-site (WSH) today and it keeps freezing on me. To be quite honest it's putting me off booking with them, and now I have read your post it makes me even less likely to book with them.

Hopefully you will get it sorted Kat, it seems odd (well unethical really)that they have taken your money without giving you a booking reference number.

Im still fuming.
I do see where your comming from when you say maybe i shouldnt have booked the flights but the money for the hotel left my avail balance straight away so obviously as i thought i had paid for the hotel i booked the flights. Im still short of the money which will take aprox 4 / 5 days to get back to my account and i have since read some appaling reveiws about WSH.
I can only go on how i have found them and that so far has been rude and very much a couldnt care less attitude. I have been to Belfast before many times and will do as we usually do and book into the Hilton.
I know now in future if it looks to good to be true it prob is.
Thanks for all advise, they say word of mouth is a very good advert and boy do i have a big mouth lol

Kat,
have WSH stated how much extra money needed for the accomm. booking?

Why should their refund take 4-5 days when the debit was immediate?

Have you contacted the Hilton directly and sought a rate having explained you are a frequent resident?

Have you contacted trading standards and if so, what was their response?

Feedback is really helpful to us as we are then better placed to help other posters in the future with similar problems.

Good Luck and do let us know.

Mike

Hi Mike

The refund takes 4 /5 days which is standard when refunding a debit / credit card payment ( which im my mind proves my point about having made the booking... How can they refund if the booking wasnt a booking )

I got a great deal again at the Hilton. Ive got one of the loyalty cards and should have just booked there in the first place.

To book with WSH would be nearly double my initial payment and to ive lost faith in them anyway so best stick with a reputable company.

Contacted trading standards who couldnt realy help and gave me another number although she said as the refund has been made ( 4/5 days clearance ) theres not realy a lot i can do.
Thanks for all advice x

Thanks for the update Kat.
Glad you're sorted although leaves a sour taste re. WSH doesn't it.

Dear all,

Please accept our apologies for the performance issues on our websites over the last few days.

We are currently experiencing high volumes of traffic to our sites that unfortunately has caused slow browsing during peak booking times. We have been working to resolve these issues and have made a few minor enhancements which have improved things somewhat.

Reference the detail in this current complaint thread. We feel it necessary to clarify both the situation at hand and way our system works...

Our company deals with multiple worldwide incoming hotel suppliers in real time.

Standard booking procedure is to check that funds are available to us before booking rooms, this is done by a deferred payment transaction (simply a check that the card is real and has available funds). This is NOT a movement of any money, but serves as a notification to the bank that we may be returning to collect the money if a booking is successfully made with our supply agents.

In the case of some bookings, including this one, we are unable to confirm the rooms required due to connection problems between our system and our hotel suppliers system at the time of booking, and as such these bookings fail.

When bookings fail in this way, the deferred transaction is automatically aborted/voided at our end notifying the card company / bank that the funds are not required and we will not be returning to collect them, which then leaves our customer's card company or bank responsible for removing the pending transaction from the customer's statement.

The purpose of this post is to clear up the confusion that in these cases, including this booking, no refund is necessary, because no money has ever been taken. In the case of this particular booking, both the card company involved and our credit card authoriser, Protx, have confirmed this.

In addition, no booking documentation or confirmation was provided. It is just unfortunate that our staff were not working on New Years Day, when this booking was made, as we could have confirmed the above with our customer there and then preventing any unnecessary worry. Certainly a lesson learned on our side.

Once again we offer our apologies to kat225club and also to everyone else who has been experiencing difficulties with our sites over the last few days.

Our travel consultants are available on 01332 871 990, should anyone wish to contact us for extra reassurance.

Very Kindest Regards

David Clifford
Managing Director
Winter Sunshine Holidays Ltd

Will you honour the price which i was booking the hotel at ? i have photos of your web site stating the price, my details and that it was avail, at the bottom of the page it said click once to pay and confirm... I did indeed click once to pay and confirm but you say no booking ???
I also have a mini statement from the cash point stating the amount was not avail from my account as it was on its way to you.

Mr Clifford

Reading your response above you have said

In the case of some bookings, including this one, we are unable to confirm the rooms required due to connection problems between our system and our hotel suppliers system at the time of booking, and as such these bookings fail.

I agree the problem was with your system but why should i loose out ?

The money left my account instantly for you to collect regardless of wether you did or did not the money was there for the booking which i was making.
You have admitted the PROBLEM was on your side and i would like to know will you be compensating me in any way shape or form for my time spent trying to sort this out, distress and worry caused ( i had booked my flights after the hotel ) And also the fact my money was not avail for 3 days due again to your system failure ???
Come on Mr Clifford let us see how good your customer service is
Kat

David Clifford,

Let me be the first to congratulate you in having the decency and foresight to post on this site. I applaud you.

Most company directors in ANY industry refuse to discuss complaints directly with their aggrieved customers - in my experience this particularly applies to large companies (FTSE 250's). You are therefore a welcome exception.

As it's in my nature to analyse and attempt to improve any technological aspects could I make a couple of suggestions re. your explained procedure:

When you seek confirmation from the customer's bank that both the card is indeed valid and funds do exist I assume you leave some kind of "marker" - I believe you refer to this as a deferred transaction. I fail to see how the bank (credit card is less a problem) treat this as a true debit transaction. Clearly, Kat's bank downdated her balance so THEY did treat the inquiry as a genuine debit.

I would suggest therefore that the nature of your enquiry should be recognised by the bank as such, no money should be removed at that initial stage. Therefore, if the full transaction is not completed within an agreed period of time the inquiry simply expires. Under this regime, Kat would have seen an unchanged balance, the bank would not have removed the funds, you never got them anyway, the bank would not benefit from the possibility of tipping their customer into the red and would not save a small amount of interest payable.

Your site should stress that unless a booking reference is displayed the client should assume the booking is NOT active. Further automated assurance of this could be provided in the form of an email sent to the client in the event of a successful booking which, for whatever technical reasons might exist still fails to display a reference. Kat, having not received such an email would therefore be able to safely assume that no such booking was made.

I appreciate your staff are unlikely to be working on New Years day and hence unable to assist in bookings made that very day. Banks also don't work on that day but the electronic aspects of course do. I am surprised however that such electronic processes are acted upon in real-time. It is my understanding that transactions are processed by the banks overnight and will show on statements (accessed via internet banking) the next day at the earliest. It may be that you company and Kat share the same bankers in which case had her account been debited (as she saw it) immed. after your deferred transaction (fund available request) your notice to abort should have the immediate and opposite affect - also in real-time mode.

Clearly, there are issues here that the Banks should address.

I do note that Kat's transaction may have involved a credit card. I suspect a similar process applies to both c.c. and debit cards.

Finally, again, thanks David for your informative post. I for one have learned a considerable amount.

Mike

I was booking airport car parking online just before Xmas when the site froze just as I was completing the transaction, but before I had received a booking reference on the screen.

I was unsure whether the booking had been successful or not until I received a confirmation email within a minute or two confirming all the details.

luci

Thanks for that Luci.
It makes sense for WSH (or any other similar site) to email the confirmation at the end of the process. The mechanisms for this differ from those involved in the main web site access. Also, there could be a problem with the clients PC causing the "freeze". When that's resolved the email would be received although the site may well be unable to re-display the confirmation ref. etc.

Looks like Kat never got such an email.

However, as money was taken from her card it strikes me that the link between the extraction of money and the transmission of the email confirmation is far too loose.

There's a lot of confusion out there about 'virtual' money transactions and the first is that the 'virtual' and 'real' time transactions happen at the same time and they don't. Yes, life would be so much easier for us as consumers if they did but they don't and, no, I don't understand why they don't either but the reality is that a transaction drawing on your current cheque account on the Net or via punching in your PIN at a retailers is treated and processed as if it was a cheque transaction and still takes 3 says for clearing before it arrives in the seller's bank account.

This is why there is a difference between the 'balance' on your account which gives you how much is still in your account and is equivalent to what the bank thinks is there even though you know that you've just written a cheque and this isn't really what is your available funds to spend, and your 'available balance' which takes account of any outstanding 'virtual' transactions where the bank knows that the money hasn't yet left your account but will do so very soon. For example, yesterday I hit the sales and bought 3 jackets and a cardigan in total from a number of shops using my debit card in each case. None of the money thus spent has actually left my account yet and my 'balance' remains exactly the same as it did before I went shopping but my 'available balance' was reducing steadily throughout the afternoon. I requested a balance statement from an ATM on my way home and it clearly drew the distinction between the 'balance' on the account and the 'available balance' the latter being less than the former by exactly the amount that my purchases came too. As yet, none of those shops has actually been paid by my bank but they are trusting the bank's electronic information that I had sufficient available funds in my account to honour the transactions and that they will receive the money at close of (banking) business on Monday (probably about 4.00pm!). They won't get it until Monday of course because clearing takes three bank working days not simply 3 days - if I'd continued shopping after about 4.00pm then those shops would have probably had to wait until Tuesday for their money. You can see this phenomenon all the time if you check your bank statements closely - any withdrawal from an ATM after 4.00pm on a Friday will actually be dated for the following Monday or in the case of a withdrawal I made on the evening of Friday 22nd December, Wednesday 27 December after the weekend and the 2 bank holidays.

I'm not sure that all banks provide this information in exactly the same way - and don't forget that 1st January was a bank holiday and this means that no transactions made on that day will actually be processed until the 2nd at the earliest. My reading of the original post was that a debit and not a credit card was used and it is not clear whether the balance referred to was the real time 'balance' that took account of money actually still remaining in the account which would definitely NOT have reflected any transaction made on the Internet on a bank holiday or the 'available balance' which would have reflected the 'marker' placed by WSH against the account. The net effect is that a retailer is in the same position as the garage that Mike referred to - there is no contract until the money has been removed from the customers account and transferred to the retailer's one. They can legally cancel the transaction while the money is being 'cleared' by removing the marker which effectively says 'This customer owes us this amount of money so don't let them spend it with someone else' and the 'available balance' will be increased accordingly.

Given that kat225club has now obtained accommodation at a better price and will still be able to use the booked flights as planned, in her position I would just accept matters as they stand. If it was me I wouldn't have booked the flights until being be able to speak to someone at WSH to confirm the status of the room booking but then I'm very cautious by nature and don't like to proceed in situations like this until I know exactly where I stand because at heart I still do not really trust the technology.

Situations like this arise repeatedly because people think that their money leaves their account and is transferred to the retailers one instantly and this suggests that banks perhaps don't do enough to educate their customers into how debit card transactions are processed if this idea is still persisting. The fact is that the transaction isn't instantaneous and debit card transactions should really be seen as the equivalent of writing a virtual 'cheque' and the transaction still requires 3 working days for clearing. What happened to kat225club is the equivalent of her seeing that cleaning product on the shelf and giving the garage a cheque which they decided they'd tear up rather than sell it to her. Frustrating but perfectly legitimate. I'm sure that it ought to be possible for electronic transactions to be processed immediately but for the moment at least they aren't - perhaps the banks don't entirely trust the technology either :-)

SM

My post above crossed with Mike's latest one which shares the same misconception which I think probably continues to arise because so many of us deal in actual 'cash' ie banknotes less and less that I think we tend to assume that the banks don't either but in fact considerably amounts of actual banknotes still change hands between banks! Electronic systems as currently used by the banks should be seen as the equivalent of the old ledgers and no more - they record the transactions on our accounts but no more signify when the actual transfer of the money between accounts takes place than old style manual ledgers did. At the end of the day's business, banks still reckon up the day's debits and credits with all the other banks and still 'settle' their accounts with each other by the transfer of cash in the form of banknotes! Or even bullion! Archaic, yes, but still the way these things work. And why bank robbers can still find security vans carrying millions in used notes to intercept and rob!

SM