Q: I booked a prepaid, nonrefundable rental car through Hotwire. Then, a few days later I booked another car for the same dates by mistake.
I tried to cancel one of the bookings and request a refund. Hotwire refuses. Obviously, I can't drive two cars at the same time. Their system shouldn't allow someone to double-book.
I have used Hotwire for many years. Before this, I was a satisfied customer. Can you help me get my $178 back?
Q: You made two prepaid, nonrefundable car rental reservations through Hotwire. And they are, as you say, prepaid and nonrefundable. As a regular user of Hotwire, you should have known that.
But just how nonrefundable is nonrefundable? Well, I've talked to insiders at opaque sites like Hotwire, and here's what they tell me: If you make an honest mistake when you book through the site and call right away, they can work with you to cancel the overlapping reservation. But the longer you wait, the harder it gets to fix something like this. And yes — by nonrefundable, they really mean nonrefundable. Well, mostly.
Still, I think Hotwire should have a system to at least warn you that you're about to make a double booking. And it looks like Hotwire didn't send you a confirmation for your first reservation. If it had sent you one, this would be a borderline case that I couldn't have advocated. But it looks like a few things went wrong on Hotwire's side, too.
I reviewed the email correspondence between you and Hotwire. Everything looked promising for getting a refund. A representative told you not to worry, agreeing that your second booking was a "mistake." He added that Hotwire just needed to "verify" the refund through your car rental company.
Then you received bad news: "We can only process a refund for the other reservation if one of them was processed within an hour. But it shows here that the second reservation was booked after a few days."
You probably already know this, but next time, you might want to avoid a nonrefundable reservation.
I think a brief, polite appeal to a Hotwire executive might have also worked for you. I list the names, numbers and email addresses of the Expedia contacts on my consumer advocacy site, elliott.org.
I contacted Hotwire on your behalf, asking it to review your case. A representative responded quickly. "I just wanted to close the loop and let you know that we've canceled the double booking and issued a HotDollar credit for the second booking Mr. Sharp made in the amount of $178," a representative told me. That's a generous resolution.
