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Snoozing didn’t work-BCD now threatening me to pay for cancelled reservation

Hi,  I set up an account with Booking.com early in the morning. I went through all the settings etc and found out there is basically now protection for hosts. So I decided to snoozed my property till I discuss it further with my husband. Few hours later I got booking confirmation for end of December! So I contacted booking.com how come they advertised my property when it was snoozed and they were not able to answer that. They just said I may pay the difference in rents if the guest accept their alternative accommodation. How come? It’s not my problem, I didn’t do anything wrong. I had  contract with them for 10hours - I already terminated- and I never gave then permission to advertise it. It was snoozed! It should’ve gone live. Don’t know what to do now. I don’t really want to pay anything to them... that would be quite expensive 10 hours of partnership with booking. Anybody had similar problem?


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BrookAve 3 years ago

 

Welcome, this is common problem with new partners, not realising they must not leave their room types open after they create them as they default to open.

 

I know it shouldnt be like that, but some utter muppet of a web dev in dev team, decided it was a good idea and it got through signoff to go into production version of the site.


 

Go to the Rates & Availability menu and either use the Calendar in List View or use the Open /close sub menu option 

 

You want to bulk edit all rooms to closed status  or use the Open/Close to close all rooms for 12 months..

 

Now once you have finalised everything start to open the availability.


 

As per the T&C as bookings are auto confirmed based on your calendar, in order to dea l with that early booking, deal with them directly do not engage BdC support to relocate them.

 

99% of the time my method will avoid paying relocation fees.

1. contact guest to advise of you are not open for business yet or any other reason you might want to use, but keep it on point , and short.

2. you may want to offer then a free night , or change dates etc, or a voucher if they book directly once you are open for business.

i.e. be smart about it.

3. now click on Request Cancel on right pane of the reservation details page.

They will receive a notification and have to action it by click on a confirm link.

4. now wait for them to action, if the prepaid BdC at booking time then the system will issue full refund.

 

Kind regards

 

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Petra psenickova 3 years ago

hi BrookeAve, I’m such idiot. Of course I contacted first BDC! I’m absolutely useless. Even though they set up availability as a default I still ised the snooze function, so i believed the problem is on their side. I don’t want to jave anything in common with them anymore. I terminated my contract which lasted few hours,but they are still keeping saying that I may need to pay that extra money for alternative booking. Can they really do that? I believe it’s not my fault. But they don’t seem to be bothered.... I’m usig other accommodation platforms and never jas any problems with them. Few bours with booking and I’m already stressed?

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Petra psenickova 3 years ago

basically during setting up my account there was an option to snooze your property,so it won’t show. So I chose that,but couldn’t really find that option anymore after I finished creating my account... anyway I believed it wouldn’t show so I just left it. I didn’t look at any guide,they cancelled it over the phone. I was just wondering whether there is anything like cooling off period if they don’t asmit it was problem with their settings... I’m reatstupid I should’ve contacted the guest they wouldn’t probably do anything about it. It’s booking made few hours ago for end of December...

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Petra psenickova 3 years ago

Also how can they actually charge me when they don’t have any of my payment details etc? I don’t want to have any troubles with them,but this all is just so unfair 

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BrookAve 3 years ago

ah ok then if account deleted, closed then i wouldnt think about it further.

 

if you had kept account your balance would be minus and any bookings coming in when payout due would be deducted to pay off the minus balance.

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Petra psenickova 3 years ago

Do you think I can really forget about it? I’m so scared with these things. I’m worried they are going to sue me? I know, I’m overthinking it too much. Just wonder why they didnt just confirm they would actually leave it,because I cancelled and didn’t have any deals with them anyway... 

Thank you very much for your help. I wish I published my question first thing in the morningg rather than talking to useless customer service...