This is a WATCH YOUR STEP story, please read all the way through. The word to the wise is: If you use an agglomeration site like Hotels.com or Trivago.com to look for a hotel, be careful.
Here's my story:
- I searched for York hotels yesterday using Trivago.com.
- I keyed in "York, Pennsylvania" and the York dates as my search criteria and the results were displayed.
- When I'm not traveling with the woman in my life, I view a hotel as the place I go to change my socks. As long as the towels actually bend, I'm fine with it. I.e., I'm looking for CHEEP.
- When the results were returned, I sorted the list by "Price: Lowest to Highest". I saw pictures of the "usual suspects" (e.g., Super 8, Motel 6, Rodeway, et al).
- I noted that the lowest prices are currently $85 per night, before taxes.
- I looked through the different deals and, by changing bed combinations (e.g., a king instead of 2 queens), I found a deal at Motel 6 for $51 per night!
- I booked it as fast as I could. Lucky me! (....or so I thought.)
- When my confirmation email arrived (from Booking.com, a unit of Priceline.com), it confirmed that I indeed had booked for two nights at $51 per night at the Motel 6 .............................. in York, Nebraska.
UGH. It seems that, in the data exchange among Trivago.com => Priceline.com => Booking.com => Motel6.com, York, Pennsylvania became York, Nebraska.
I went through their process again to confirm that it was an error in their system and not something I did with an errant mouse click. There truly is a flaw in their processing during the handoff among the companies/websites involved.
I canceled the erroneous reservation on the spot, but it's a darned good thing I looked over the confirmation email when it arrived. I would have felt quite foolish returning from a night of beer with the boys, trying to check in, and having the overnight clerk point out that the reason she couldn't find my reservation ... was because it was 19 states to the west ... and that she was sorry because they were all booked for the night ...
So: Be careful out there, boys and girls. If you use an online service like Trivago, Expedia, Hotels.com, Booking.com, etc., check your confirmations.
Steven J. Serenska
