***STAY AWAY AT ANY COST!!***I get it. They have good prices. But please please trust me - avoid this awful website like the plague! As long as all goes well, fine. However, if you do encounter a problem - entirely independent from your conduct, entirely their responsibility and as serious as they can be - you will realise what a disgusting customer experience means. Seriously, yoy were warned. I was stuck in town due to emergency medical needs. So I had to book a lot of nights in hotels, which drained my savings. Hotels can have good rates on Agoda but they do NOT advise that some places charge extortionary security deposits upon checking in! Usually I paid $50 per booking. The last booking, 3 nights, at the Miller Apartments in Adelaide, was a disaster. I arrived there for check in, exhausted, visibly bruised by hospital procedures, and the girl at reception demanded $150 security deposit. When I said I was not advised there was a deposit let alone a hefty one, she immediately turned rude and mean and said she would not check me in and I had to find somewhere else. The Hotel was absolutely shameful, however the initial fault was Agoda's, because as I showed the receptionist, they absolutely do not mention any deposit at all. I had already paid $100 deposits elsewhere, and those take time to go back to your account and was out of pocket. The whole charade took place in front of other customers, which added embarassment to the disaster. Agoda was utterly unresponsive, unhelpful, unprofessional, unreliable, a complete scam. They washed their hands off the issue, saying I paid for a non refundable fee. However, eventually the hotel agreed to refund the booking, but needed Agoda to initiate it. Despite over 1 hour on the phone with them, they did NOTHING. Zero. They said they bought the rooms off a third party and needed to reach them to action this request. However, this third party, which was Chinese and mysterious, never got back to them. I called again and again throughout the day and they LIED to me saying the partner had tried to contact the Hotel (24/7 availability!!) and failed and so they sent an email. So I called back the hotel, to ask about the email - but there was NO email. It was a lie. Nobody contacted them at all. 24 hours later, 2 calls, over half hour each, and still same excuses. Today the novelty was that the mysterious third partner had in turn bought the rooms off a fourth partner and so until they could contaxt them, I would not see a cent. I had no choice but to pay for three more nights elsewhere, pay once again a $50 deposit...and not a cent has been returned by Agoda yet. Had I not had any way to find more money, I would have literally been left on the street despite having paid for a supposedly superior hotel in advance and in full!!!Make sure you think hard and long before trusting this trash of a website. Better safe than sorry. Stay clear of them, and keep in mind that the Miller Apartmentson tieor part is a pretentious, rude, awful place where they will pretend to be all smiles and adulation then turn on you in a split second like feral jackals. Never again! Take your business somewhere else.
