LastMinuteTravel.com Travel Republic, Inc. They Charged my Hotel Reservation then cancelled the booking... Altamonte Springs Florida

Hello,

My wife and i were at the lax Airport checkin-in to make a nice and good weekend in Panama City, Panama. Once checked in, and after passing through airport security, we used the LastMinuteTravel.com website to book a hotel in Panama because we saw plenty of hotels were available on the day before.

Therefore, we booked the Hard Rock Hotel Panama Megalopolis from 06/01 to 06/04 and we were charged $360.84 for the three days then, received immediately a Hotel Reservation Confirmation.

However, just before boarding the aircraft, LastMinuteTravel.com sent us another email saying that they cancelled our reservation...!

"Thank you for choosing Last Minute Travel. This email is to inform you that your reservation has been cancelled as the information you provided does not match the credit card used. Your credit card was refunded. Please contact your bank to verify your information before submitting a new reservation... Please be advised, all transactions are subject to verification of all information provided and may be cancelled due to verification failure..."

I provided them exactly with the real and accurate credit card and billing information so i was really upset because the money we used was to pay the hotel booking and was deposited on a prepaid visa card, so they were holding that money until the refund was appearing back in the account....!

My wife and i were completely bored because we were then boarding and had no hotel booking plus less money to travel because the money which was on the prepaid account was blocked by the credit card company to guarantee their payment to LastMinuteTravel.com....! Also, we had to use another credit card and booked another hotel with Expedia which was going through very well as usual...

Following that incident, we arrived in Panama with less money than expected for the weekend so we did not travel a lot during the weekend because a part of our money was blocked for nothing as LastMinuteTravel didn't do a good job..! We also called them from Panama spending lots of money for nothing as their customer service didn't take care of what we were saying and told us, you have been refunded with no apologize or help to compensate what was happening... Plus, the person on the phone was rude and didn't explained us what happened saying that "if we cancelled, it's possible that we did not receive approval for the payment or information was not accurate" while i was charged and the money was blocked by the bank immediately after the reservation....

I also called the bank and they guaranteed that they gave approval for the transaction with a valid approval code which confirmed my reservation with the online travel agency...

I was reviewing plenty of other complaints with LastMinuteTravel.Com and i saw that plenty of people complaint about this travel agency, lost of them saying hotel bookings were cancelled, refunds took long time, customer service was not attentive and taking care of customer complaints.... That's exactly what was happening also to us...

The charges were appearing on the account as debited on 06/02 only one day after the reservation made throughout their website while the refund appeared into the account only on 06/05 four days later contrary to what they said when sending the cancellation notice via email on the same day of making the reservation...! Unfortunately for us, we already came back to LA when we received the refund to the prepaid card, and we spent 3 days there in Panama with less money during our stay as we had to pay twice for the hotel, so we didn't do lots of things due to lack of money... Also, the refund received was not equivalent to the original charges and we received $5 less than what was charged before!

I emailed LastMinuteTravel.Com one time last week, attaching copies of the bank account statement, the detailed credit card charged made with approvals, and a copy of the billing information plus copies of the card used for booking, explaining what was happening and telling that i will dispute this issue if they weren't do anything to compensate, and they answer that this issue was due to insufficient funds or the credit card was denied, while money was approved and put on hold on the credit card...., and they added that they will not do anything to compensate as there were not in fault...!

I replied another time and re explaining the situation and they answered that the information was certainly not accurate so they had to cancel the reservation and refund the booking... while i already sent them proof that there was no particular issue with both the card, the billing info and the money available in the account which was blocked until charge definitively by the travel agent...

I will never use again their services also as this weekend gave us too much stress, less discovery compared to what we were expecting to do, only troubles and nothing else, so we did not enjoy it like we hope, having spent lots of money just for the airline and the hotel alone without the possibility to spend more while in Panama…

Hope the review will help lots of people!