Hotels.com Shannon Customer Service Lied to Me About Getting a Refund for Reservation Not Listed in Our Account Internet

We booked two refundable hotels for a trip we were planning, but got a confirmation for only one of them. When we decided not to take the trip, we went to hotels.com to cancel the hotels, but only one was listed. I
searched email, different accounts, and different third party booking services but couldn't find any record that the second reservation had gone through, so we assumed it hadn't processed.

 A few days before the planned trip, we got an email about our "upcoming trip," once it was past the refundable cancellation period. We called customer service immediately and the agent agreed that the reservation was not listed in our account and said there was a problem with the website. She told us we'd have to wait until the hotel charged us the 100% fee for canceling within 7 days of arrival and then fax a copy of our credit card statement to hotels.com so they could get us refunded.

We got charged, faxed it to them, and everyone since then has said there is nothing they can do to help us and we'd have to take it up with the hotel, which did nothing wrong in this scenario. Either someone is lying or the standard for handling problems is horribly inconsistent across the company, or both. Never trust this unethical company!