Beware the tale of a Bernalillo couple who lost – but then regained – $800, due to a third-party hotel booking site that threatened to make their stay in Gunnison, Colo., far more costly than expected.
Third-party sites have been around for years, some of them “ripping off consumers and ruining vacation plans,” according to the Better Business Bureau.
In the New Mexico case, the Bernalillo woman was seeking a hotel room for the couple’s trip by doing an internet search. Instead of clicking on an official hotel website, she ended up doing business with a separate booking company.
That company took her credit card number and charged more than $800 for the reservation. When the couple got to the hotel, they had to show a credit card anyway – a common practice among hotels in case of incidental charges or any damage.
However, they ended up getting charged twice: $800 by the booking company and another $662 by the hotel. The couple says not only did the booking company overcharge them for those hotel rooms, but it never made the reservation at all.
The Dallas-based company they dealt with, Getaroom.com, (which also goes by the names of Getaroom, Consumer Club, Inc., and ConsumerClub.com), has been the subject of 1,869 complaints to the Better Business Bureau during the past three years.
Consumers nationwide have reported total losses of more than $584,000, according to a spokeswoman for the North Central Texas BBB.
Getaroom, which was taken over by…
