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Hotwire's email disappeared


overtonhayes
By overtonhayes,
in

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Hi,

My husband and I have to be at an event in Atlanta next month, and we're planning on making it a nice weekend away. We're looking for a 4 or 5 star hotel and are considering Hotwire. Trouble is, we were really ripped off the last time we used it.

This happened back in May 2010. It was my last night in GA for a long time and we booked a hotel room in Atlanta, near the airport, ahead of time. I don't know whether the policies have since changed but then you had to have a Hotwire account or get a room as a guest. We bought a room as a guest, and were told we would get an email nearer to the time of our stay with our hotel details. Well, nearer the time, this email arrived, and I quickly glanced at it to see the name. I read the name, didn't recognise it, closed the email and thought nothing of it.

It came to the night we were supposed to be staying in the hotel. We made last-minute plans to have a late meal and a few drinks, so we wanted to call the hotel and just check it was alright to check-in late. I pulled up my email on my husband's phone... ...and the email was nowhere to be found. I KNOW I didn't delete it. I searched through my spam folders, my deleted folders, everything. As I said, I know for a fact that I didn't delete the email (also, there were emails in my deleted box: to have deleted it I would have had to delete it, then go into my deleted box, deleting that one email but leave the rest...? No, there's no way that happened). I checked the email on multiple phones and nope, nowhere.

We called Hotwire and got an automated message telling us to enter our Hotwire account number, which we didn't have because we placed our booking as a guest. We waited, thinking it would keep repeating itself and then give us an automated "sorry, we didn't catch that, let us put you through to an advisor" message. Nothing. There were no other options but to enter your account number. Somehow (I don't remember how, this was over a year ago) we managed to get through to somebody. I think we found another number for Hotwire. Well, we finally got through to someone and explained the situation. They told us to check our email. I said that I already had, and there was nothing there. Could they please just tell us the name of our hotel. They asked for our booking number, which could be found in the email. I reminded them AGAIN that we didn't have the email. They said without a booking reference or account number they couldn't help us. I gave our names, they said it was no use (by the way, my maiden name was extremely unique. This wasn't a "the name's Smith" thing). Finally, I persuaded them to use my husband's credit card, which we used to pay for the room, to find us. They ran the search and said that nothing had been booked. I about screamed at them and said that we DEFINITELY made a booking because I received an email from Hotwire which mysteriously disappeared, AND a payment to hotwire.com showed up on my husband's bank statement. But the advisor was adamant that there was no booking. When I asked if we could just get a refund, since they couldn't tell us where we were supposed to go that night, I was told again that we hadn't made any booking and that even if we had, Hotwire is completely non-refundable under any circumstances.

This may sound ridiculous, but does Hotwire have some kind of burn-after-reading thing encrypted into their emails, for the same reason that they don't tell you the name of your hotel? Has this happened to anyone else? We wouldn't even consider using Hotwire again but a friend of ours went to a concert in Atlanta recently and got an amazing room really cheap from Hotwire. When we told her what happened to us she was shocked.

I know for a fact that they sent me an email and it was deleted. I know I didn't delete it, and no one else could have done it either. As soon as I had access to a computer I searched through all of my emails in all of my folders for it, and I even searched in the folders of email addresses I know I didn't use in buying the room. My husband also searched through all of his emails. Nothing. But his bank balance shows we paid for the room. Even if somehow (although I really can't stress how absolutely impossible it is) I wiped the email from the face of the earth, why were Hotwire telling us that we never made a booking when it showed up on my husband's bank statements, so it was clearly made? And even if me opening and reading the email was in my imagination or a dream or something (again, impossible), why was it never sent?

Any advice would be great here. Mostly I want to know if this happened to anyone else. To this day we have never had an explanation or refund from hotwire.

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Welcome to BetterBidding!

Please start by reading your messages.

I can't say what transpired but something sounds amiss, and it sounds like user error, imo. Once you opened the email HOTWIRE wouldn't have any control over deleting it or moving it to another folder (nor would they have any incentive to do so). It is possible that the 'win' went to your BULK FOLDER where you kept it, but perhaps you have your email settings to automatically delete messages in your bulk folder 30 days (or some other timeframe) after receipt?

Should you be in this situation again i would suggest calling your credit card company who would likely have the reference number associated with the purchase in their records (if it didn't in fact appear on your own statement) in which case you could give HOTWIRE the information requested in order to retrieve your reservation.

If you'd like help with an upcoming stay please let us know the details (desired star rating, city, zone dates, budget, etc) and we'll try to assist.

Please use the PRICELINE and HOTWIRE links on the board to begin your travel purchases.

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

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This may sound ridiculous, but does Hotwire have some kind of burn-after-reading thing encrypted into their emails, for the same reason that they don't tell you the name of your hotel? Has this happened to anyone else? We wouldn't even consider using Hotwire again but a friend of ours went to a concert in Atlanta recently and got an amazing room really cheap from Hotwire. When we told her what happened to us she was shocked.

Any advice would be great here. Mostly I want to know if this happened to anyone else. To this day we have never had an explanation or refund from hotwire.

I have a few scenarios that could have occured:

1) Yahoo mail, and perhaps other services, have had many bugs with their search feature. If you were searching for a specific e-mail, it might not come up in the filter. Are you able to search for other e-mails?

2) Hotwire swears up and down that you weren't charged to begin with. What refund do you think you are entitled to? If so, the burden of proof is on YOU, not them. You need to come up with a bank receipt or credit card statement which you can fax to hotwire and help them in their investigation of your missing hotel.

3) You said you saw another person's name on the e-mail, but thought nothing of it at the time. Were you intoxicated? I mean, sorry, were you using a public computer, that may have had someone else's log-in, someone who may or may not have cancelled your room depending on whether they have notice that a hotel had been booked on their account?

4) The delete button on an email in microsoft applications like outlook and hotmail and msn mail is an "X" that looks like close but it is really a delete button. You could have also inadvertantly deleted your emails, or they could be in your spam or delete folder. Any chance at all that you could contact your internet service provider to locate an email? (This would be easier if a work computer, but also I believe yahoo mail and some others used to have a rollback

option that you could use by request.)

It will be interesting to see what scenario turns out to be your case, not likely any of the above 3 but just ponderings on my part. You could have any number of answers for this, and if you research a little more, let us know what comes out of it. Did you check your credit card statements for the time the purchase was made? Hotwire charges you the same day but it might post the next business day, as well. Don't rely on customer service on the phone to track your reservation down, when it could be subject to their error in defining the search as well as your entering the dates and names at the time of reservation.

Incidently, Hotwire once gave me $25 back because a hotel double billed me, even though this was not hotwire's fault nor could they have prevented it, really. They also gave me $100 once when a hotel was sold out but had not notified hotwire in time (or else perhaps there was an error in hotwire's inventory system). So your suspicions of hotwire doing shady things are not necessary.

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No, I didn't recognise the name of the HOTEL. I'd been looking at hotels on Tripadvisor and opened the email to see if we'd been given one of the hotels I'd read good reviews about. It wasn't a hotel I recognised. Of course I didn't see another person's name and think nothing of it.

We were charged by Hotwire. No matter what they say about having no record of our booking, the money left my husband's account and went to them. This isn't about us getting a refund: it was over a year ago, and it was on my husband to fix that part since it came from his bank account and I was out of the US. But I don't see how you can ask what refund I think I am entitled to when we paid for a room that wasn't booked for us.

Again this was a long time ago, but no, it wasn't the search feature. I not only used the search feature in my email but painstakingly looked through every single email in all of my folders. I did this multiple times and on different computers.

I don't use outlook, and there is no way I could have accidentally deleted the email. I also searched through my spam and deleted mail, as I said. The deleted mailbox had hundreds of emails in there but wasn't full, and there was no email from Hotwire.

All of that happened a very long time ago. I am not after a refund from Hotwire. All that I want to know is what happened, if it has happened to anyone else, and if we can trust Hotwire again for when we're in ATL next month. We just happened to be lucky last time in that we were able to stay with a relative instead of our hotel. There is no way I am risking having nowhere to stay.

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It would be appreciated if you started by reading your messages.

Regarding your scenario above, yours is the first i have heard of anything like this (and while i can't say what really happened, I think you're going to have to accept the fact that most here, based upon your story above, are going to contribute this to user error). Moving forward, it will ultimately be up to you to decide to use HOTWIRE again in the future. If you'd like to, or prefer to try PRICELINE this time around, let us know and we'll try to assist further.

Please use the PRICELINE and HOTWIRE links on the board to begin your travel purchases.

Thanks.

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

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