Hey everyone, Thought I'd register and let you all know of my Hotwire experience. Yesterday (Aug 1st) I booked (2) 4-Star rooms for Washington DC (Capitol Hill) area. Got a rate of $86/night per room. I ended up with the "Capital Hilton" as my hotel. So as curious as I'm when I book through HW or PL, I started doing research on this hotel (reading reviews, etc). MOST of the reviews I found on TripAdvisor, Yahoo, PL, etc were very bad for the last couple of months. So today (Aug 2nd) I decided to find a "loophole" and get my reservation changed/cancelled. I went to various travel booking sites and A LOT of them had given Capital Hilton a 3 or 3.5 star rating rather than a 4-star. These travel sites included Hotels.com, Expedia, Travelocity, AAA, & Yahoo. I called up HW and explained the situation to them. I asked them how they can rate this hotel as a 4-Star while many other travel websites have a lower rating for the same hotel (rightfully so). The rep was very nice and he checked and saw the lower rating on the other websites. He then put me on hold so he can read some of the recent customer reviews on TripAdvisory. He came back and agreed that the hotel does not appear to fit the 4-Star level and offered me a $100 HW credit ($25 for each room for each night). I asked him to rebook me with another Hotel, to which he informed me that I can end up with the same hotel if I choose the same area again. I thought about it and felt uncomfortable with the whole situation so I asked for a refund and low and behold he issued me a full refund. The rep was extremely nice and understanding. He did mention that I had my "facts" in place and HW will usually support customers who have real factual concerns. Which was the case in this situation. So right after that I logged on to PL and ended up with a much nicer 4-star hotel for the same price! All in all so far very nice ending. Hopefully this new Hotel will be a trendy 4-star hotel (the customer reviews are definately A LOT better!).
