Now. there’s a Miss Wang who received a credit card transaction message of over five thousand dollars. After checking with the bank, she discovered it was for a hotel reservation through the Agoda website in Kenting.
However, Miss Wang claims that she never made any hotel reservations. She quickly called the hotel to confirm if it was a case of unauthorized use, only to find out that the hotel had retained her reservation information from over a year ago but failed to handle it properly. This led to an employee mistakenly rebooking the room for her.
First things first, though. Before we delve into the details of the case, I would like to note some controversies that come out from the news video that we see above from PTS. First, PTS claims that Ms Wang used Agoda to book a hotel a year ago, while the same time, while PTS keeps on with a news video, they keep scrolling over the booking.com page:
Screenshot from the PTS news video on youtube showing booking.com website.
Now, of course, I am aware of the two essential things – the first being that booking.com and agoda.com do not charge the cards directly to customers, hotels do. However, as you see later, it is a big difference for Taiwan hotels and B&Bs weather you use Agoda or Booking.com to book the hotel. Some hotels warn NOT to use the Agoda, even going that far, that using a special image at the image gallery in booking.com, or at least asks contact them in case they want to use Agoda. Example:
This hotel uses a picture in their booking.com gallery to warn guests to contact them if they want to use Agoda.
Another warning for Agoda on the another hotels website in Kenting
Now, a more drastic example, check out this Whitelance B&B listing on booking.com, which uses a MAIN PICTURE, guys, once again – MAIN PICTURE as a warning to NOT TO AGODA at all, or at least contact them.
Imagine how pissed off they should be to waste the main picture, which directly affects their conversion rate in the listing view when you scroll down to the hotels – to show the warning instead? Seeing this, I would not even think about using Agoda to book any hotels in Kenting, and maybe in the whole Taiwan, something is going on for sure there.
Whitelance B&B even uses their main picture to warn about Agoda.com!
Next time after I check in some of the hotels in Kenting who use these warnings, I will ask them what is going on with Agoda, but till that time I would stay away from this platform. Now, another thing I want to add, that I am also aware, that Booking.com and Agoda.com are actually under the same mother company – source.
But even having said this – I still do not understand why PTS says about Agoda in their video verbally, while showing a scrolling of booking.com website same time. Let’s get back now to the particular case with Ms Wang,
PTS says, that the bank message that Ms. Wang received, displayed a credit card charge of NTD5,875, leaving Miss Wang very perplexed.
It appears that the bank identified it as a payment for accommodation at a certain hotel in Kenting made through Agoda, even though she didn’t make any reservation. She contacted the hotel to verify if it was a case of unauthorized use, only to find out that the hotel mistakenly utilized her booking information from over a year ago and rebooked the room for her. This incident infuriated Miss Wang, prompting her to lodge a complaint online.
Credit card charge notification that Ms. Wang received from her bank
Now, next what I want to make attention to from what I see in this news video from PTS is – they use a term “some hotel”, while same time just blatantly showing this footage:
This is a “some hotel” in Kenting who charged a Ms. Wangs card
Well, if you have at least once in your life time driven down to Kenting from North from Fangshan to Kenting, then you know that this place is in Haikou, Checheng Township, and this hotel stands just on the crossroads between turning right to Coastal Highway to Checheng Beach and Golden Coast Beach, and it is literally just in front of Haikou Harbour with a tourist center there. Which hotel is it? Well, see yourself:
Is it the same hotel on the footage in the video from PTS news? You bet.
Now this is where it becomes even more enjoyable. In the above video footage, we see Mr. Chen in the black mask over his face, claiming that, “She (their employee) was doing research on this. We were here yesterday specifically to act on disposing of some of the data that we have stored for over a year. Coincidentally, our interns and some of the apprentices took it from her.”
Mr Chen rants about apprentices, interns and document disposals in his hotel
After all that talking, the explanation is that an employee placed the documents meant for destruction on the photocopier. The intern mistook it for scrap paper, took it and used it to make a hotel booking, which resulted in the misunderstanding.
I want to add, that if this is a case, then Mr. Chen, your SOP really sucks.
The hotel previously stated that they have applied for the cancellation of authorization and will review their internal processing procedures. They informed the judge that consumers can report complaints to the competent authorities. Additionally, if any related damages occur due to negligence, consumers can also seek compensation from the business through legal proceedings.