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Experieince with EasyClick


tinnub
By tinnub,
in

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I had tried to PL a room at MCO airport for Feb. 10. After numerous rejected bids, I went EasyClick and found the MCO Marriott for $69 plus taxes, $83 total. Since the Marriott page showed the hotel at over $200, I booked it on Feb. 6 for the stay on the 10th. The afternoon of the 10th I received a call from EasyClick, though another service name was used, telling me that the reservation would not be honored by Marriott, eventhough I had paid and had a confirmation from EasyClick.

They told me the Marriott was full and they would allow me to stay at the Amersuites for the same price or I could have a refund.

While the rep. was pleasant, he was not particularly helpful. I checked on Hotwire and booked a room at the Wingate Inn MCO for $46+ total of $53. Called Easyclick back and asked for refund and was told my CC would be credited. No confirmation no. etc. While it worked out well for me, others could have a problem with EasyClick. While I know it supports this board, I feel obligated to tell others of my experience.

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Thanks for telling the board about the problems you had with Easy Click. I will never use them as a result of this,if you can't trust them to have your room when you arrive its not worth the chance that they could cost you $$$$$ or even worse no room at all.

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I think being "walked" occurs with every booking service, including with Priceline and with booking the hotel directly. I've certainly read many instances. Sometimes they don't tell you until you actually arrive at the hotel.

However, if they are going to "walk" you, the industry standard is to pay for the first night. So I think that's what EasyClickTravel should have done. Then they'll have an incentive not to "walk" the next customer, and book the proper number of rooms.

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Sorry to hear this happened to you... unfortunately, overbooking is a standard practice in the hotel industry, although one that is probably occurring less, with the proliferation of non-refundable advance purchases (direct from the hotel as well as 3rd parties) helping hotels manage their inventory better.

Although i agree a free nite should have been given in this instance (as is customary in instances where customers are 'walked'), i'm not sure who is at fault here... EasyClick or the Marriott. If ECT botched the reservation than they certainly are to blame, but it's entirely possible (and more likely) that the Marriott overbooked and then told ECT to contact their customer to let them know the reservation wouldn't be honored.

An analogy would be if you booked a plane ticket thru a travel agent and the plane is overbooked and you get 'bumped'. It's the airline that is at fault and offers compensation, not the travel agent.

I would also question what would have happened if you were already on vacation, or in transit, and couldn't be reached by telephone.

Please use this HOTWIRE and these PRICELINE LINKS: HOTELS, CAR RENTALS, and AIRFARE to begin your travel purchases

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I'm sorry to hear you had that experience, but EasyClick shouldn't automatically be faulted without first being able to establish if they had or hadn't booked properly w/Marriott, as thereuare stated. Did your EasyClick confirmation have a Marriott reservation number on it? Priceline confirmations always list both the Priceline request number as well as the hotel's reservation number from their booking system. Can you determine if you were given a Marriott-generated reservation number? If you did, this is not the fault of EasyClick IMHO. If not, then perhaps EasyClick dropped the ball and didn't secure your reservation properly, thus the call from them the day you were to check in.

I was walked a few years ago on a booking made through Hotel.com (before my Priceline/Hotwire days) at Embassy Suites in Ft Lauderdale. I'm of the opinion that getting walked isn't a result of the hotel making calls to various booking sites and selecting those customers to get the shaft. Think about it. Why would a hotel, knowing they're overbooked that night, call EasyClick at 3:00pm advising their customer won't be accomodated. At 3:00pm, it's impossible to determine if the hotel will actually be full, despite the fact they're overbooked. What if they had 50 no shows that night, and wound up having space for you after all?

My experience w/Embassy Suites was such that my flight arrived very late, and by the time we arrived at the hotel it was just after Midnight. Everyone else had simply arrived ahead of us and by the time we got there, there was no room in the inn. Incidentally, we were not given the night free either. We were instead given $40 "we're sorry" cash and cabbed to the Doubletree.

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What was wierd was the ECT agent said the Marriott was full, but I checked with the Marriott website and it showed availability at $244/night. I don't think I was walked that early in the day, I think ECT had problems with their site. I don't think I had a Marriott reservation number. I did have a res. number and record locator number, but I think it was ECT. I also have heard nothing back from ECT since.

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  • 3 weeks later...

:) :) :o :) :D :P

I just had a horrible experience with Easyclick Travel tonight and I'm so peeved, I could spit, but it would probably freeze before it hit the ground!! I needed to make a hotel reservation after the 6:00 PM Hotwire and Priceline cutoff so I accessed the EasyClick Travel website and made an "off the record" reservation which turned out to be the LaGuardia Crowne Plaza at $89; I received a confirmation of my reservation from ECT. Made my way towards the Holland Tunnel but got a call a half hour later telling me that the Crowne Plaza had no rooms because of the snow and that guests did not check out. I told her that it was snowing when ECT accepted my reservation, so this should not have made any difference. The rep from ECT told me she would not charge my credit card for the room, and would re-book me at the Howard Johnson's near Newark Airport. At best, these two properties are more than one hour apart, and 2* different (HoJo's is between two highways, poorly lit, and next to a prison). I told the rep that this was not acceptable and I needed a room near LaGuardia, she would call back. I contacted the Crowne Plaza directly and was told that they might have a room available due to cancellations for $199. I never got a phone call from ECT and had to book myself into a hotel in the Ft. Lee NJ area as all of the LGA hotels were sold out. Although only 9 miles away, this is no easy drive. The problem is that Easy Click Travel took the reservation oblivious of the available inventory then faxed it over to the Crowne Plaza . This is a rotten way to do business and I won't use ECT again. ECT can take a reservation but they don't seem to care about honoring the reservation and didn't give a rat's tail about my situation. I finally called customer service and was told that they could book me in the New Yorker a property with generally bad reviews. ECT left me to my own devices, twisting in the 50 mph winds on a 20 degree night!!! I wonder what Elliott Spitzer, the Attorney General of NY might say about this ????

B) :) :) :) :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry:

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dahammer-

Sorry to hear of your bad experience with ECT, but it seems identical to mine without the snow and bad weather of course. I feel the same way toward ECT and use their website as a negotiation tool against the hotel chains that guarantee the lowest rate or will match with some sort of bonus. In my situation, to their credit, I did receive the credit on my CC statement immediately.

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After reading of these two separate incidences, I think it's imperative an ECT customer obtain the hotel's reservation number, not merely ECT's confirmation number. Priceline is great in that you're provided with both the reservation number from the hotel's computer system, plus your Priceline request number.

From these two examples, is it safe to assume ECT isn't accessing real-time inventory at the time the customer purchases from them? If correct, is ECT providing documentation during the purchase transaction advising the customer that the reservation is pending....on request....or words to that effect? If they're not, they are leading the customer to believe it's a "done deal" by providing a confirmation number, etc, even though it's not from the hotel's own booking system.

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I feel the same way toward ECT and use their website as a negotiation tool against the hotel chains that guarantee the lowest rate or will match with some sort of bonus.

Have you ever tried to use ECT's "off the record" prices against a hotel's best price guarantee program? I'm thinking it wouldn't work since "off the record" is an opaque situation. But if you've been successful with this, I'm all ears! :)

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It won't (shouldn't) work... as that is part of the reason the hotels are opaque in the first place.

The hotels want to sell additional rooms, but also have their own 'low price guarantee' policies in place. So making them opaque gives them the opportunity to sell additional rooms to a cost conscious consumer while maintaining their own margins on direct purchases and still abiding by their low price guarantee.

Please use this HOTWIRE and these PRICELINE LINKS: HOTELS, CAR RENTALS, and AIRFARE to begin your travel purchases

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I received a "reservation confirmation email" from Easy Click Travel a few minutes after I made the reservation. It listed a ECT reservation number, no reservation number from the Crowne Plaza.

I got another email from ECT at 1:38 AM that showed the reservation status as: Sold Out.

This was an off the record property but the status of my reservation was confirmed, not "on request"

Still steaming at ECT and my only satisfaction will be complete reimbursement for my hotel stay last night.

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I have an ECT reservation in Anahiem at the end of this month and am quite aprehensive aboput it because the deal was truely exceptional. My status is listed on ECT's website "confirm" not "confirmed," which suggests to me that the reservation will not be "confimed" until after the 5-day advance cancellation date (when I will already be on the road) and I gather from the discussion in this thread that I could get a call up to the very day and I hour I am to check in informing me that the hotel is overbooked and sluffing meoff to a less desirable property. If that happens (and I have to believe based on this thread that it can), ECT will be hearing from me and not just by angry letter . . . I am an attorney.

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Why not phone the hotel and ask what the status of your reservation is?

I have tried, but they do not have the reservation in their system . . . thus my presumption that the ECT "confirm" rather than "confirmed" status means that ECT must still "confirm" the reservation. ECT is a web presence for Turico Holidays, and I am guessing that they book blocks of rooms at tour company prices and then wait until their contract deadline to confirm the actual reservations, so right now the hotel probably has a block of rooms for Turico, but can't tell me that it has or whether one of them is for me.

P.S. In attempting to respond to your post I accidently clicked "report this post" (in my haste I though it was the respond to this post button . . . sorry . . . my bad. There is apparently no way to "unreport".

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That sort of sounds like this situation. I booked a room in Venice with Ryanairhotels.com which was prepaid. I emailed the hotel a couple days later and they said they wouldn't be informed until the month of the reservation about me, but they did not anticipate any problem. So I just waited until that date, and then phoned the hotel, and they did have me in their system.

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JSKoehler,

If you booked thru one of our EasyClickTravel links email or PM me the details of your stay (dates of stay, reservation number if any, date booked, your last name (not required but it can help), etc) and i will get the status and resolve any issues for you.

Please use this HOTWIRE and these PRICELINE LINKS: HOTELS, CAR RENTALS, and AIRFARE to begin your travel purchases

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I am not quite in panic mode yet, but thanks for the offer . . . My concern did not start until I read these posts and also some others elsewhere about troubles with ECT and its sister site lastminutetravel. I think the problem may be that Turico, the parent company, doesn't have safeguards to prevent overbooking, so while in most cases they are able to meet their obligations, there are enough instances of people being "walked" or not getting their rooms al all that anecdotal stories get passed on. If I hear from ECT or can confirm with the hotel, I will report back, likewise if I encounter no problem.

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Dahammer, yours was the reservation i was refering to above where EasyClickTravel was at fault (in the other 'problem' instance it was the hotel's fault).

I've been discussing this with them over the last week and you should be receiving an email from them tomorrow with what (imo) is a fair resolution.

Any problems let me know.

Please use this HOTWIRE and these PRICELINE LINKS: HOTELS, CAR RENTALS, and AIRFARE to begin your travel purchases

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I should add that I had a great experience with ECT in Las Vegas when booking a room at the Monte Carlo, I made an "off the record" reservation for one night. Upon check in, there was no mention of ECT or Turico, all that was mentioned was that my room was prepaid. I asked for and received a non smoking room with two doubles. Check out was a breeze, no surprises at all. The Monte Carlo was rated by ECT as a 4* and at the rate of $109, I thought it was a great deal for the Sunday night before Valentines day :) when many Strip properties were much more expensve.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I am pleased to report that my EasyClickTravel reservation in Anaheim at the Days Inn Maingate/Convention center for $35 went off without a hitch. The Hotel was fairly much as described in the "off the record" information, except that microwaves were not standard with the room as stated (but you could request one). No mention of ECT other than that the stating that the room was "prepaid" at check-out.

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  • 2 weeks later...

When reviewing Easy Click's list of hotels in any given city, they tend to either say "available" or "on request". Is it a safe assumption that a property displaying as "available" is drawing from real time inventory and is less likely to run into a few of the problems the others have posted about?

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