No A/C in 4 star hotel- Hotwire fights refund despite written commitment from Hotel
Just curious if someone else had similar experiences. I booked a hotel room in Berlin, Germany on rather short notice in June. 3 nights for about $1000 total, through hotwire. Was supposed to be a 4-star property and have air condition. Got there, the place is a dump and the A/C is broken. The hotel was surprisingly accommodating though and agreed to a partial refund for the first night and full refund for the remaining two. I have that in writing in a Whatsapp chat, as thats how the hotel support team communicated.
When we get home, 3 weeks go by and the refund doesn't show up. When I contact hotwire, they say they know of nothing and they wont refund anything.
So I do a chargeback through my credit card. Now another 2 months later, they keep fighting this. They have seen the printout from the hotel where they confirm this commitment and their stance is that it was a non-refundable booking, so they are not refunding.
We are now at the arbitration stage with VISA. It just seems ludicrous that even with all that documentation they are fighting this tooth and nail. Definitely the last time I will be using hotwire.
