Alliance Reservations Network ReserveTravel.com Total RIP-OFF. They lied to me and took my money. Internet

  As a booking engine technology provider, we can only offer you what is given to us by the hotel directly. If you recieved a confirmation with the "smoking" preference listed on the room type, I can assure you that this information is the same information we provided to you prior to your making a room selection.  We don't make more money selling people smoking rooms, we make a commission from the hotel based on the room rate.  So contrary to your statement, we would actually make more if you were to select a more expesive "Non-Smoking" room in this case.

  When the smoking preference is not listed in the room type provided by the hotel directly, we allow our customer the ability to pass a message to the hotel with their request. Request are not guaranteed since the hotel doesn't assign rooms to their guest until the day of check-in.

  I'm sorry you clearly missed the information that we provided to you about the smoking preference. At the end of the day, whoever you spoke to at Allaince is correct, we cannot control what room a hotel puts you in (nor can any other Internet booking company). It's a shame the hotels don't take the responsibility they should in some cases.  I guess it's just easier to blame the person that isn't standing there at the front desk at check-in.

It is difficult to reply to this complaint as I do not have any details such as our clients name or where they stayed to investigate this issue further. 85% of our reservations are booked online so our client may have inadvertently booked the 'smoking' room themselves by mistake, as it appears to be a lower priced room. As a company we treat customer service as our top priority - if our client was told by one of our Customer Service Representatives that the hotel is at fault in this case then I have to believe that this is true. It is not at all uncommon for a hotel to place a guest in a smoking room if there are no non-smoking rooms available. Based on the limited details I have I can only surmise that the hotel is at fault, and it would be at the hotels discretion to offer our mutual client any sort of compensation. We will be happy to open a case file on this should our client wish to contact us again in the future.