I used Agoda to book a hotel for my stay in Beijing, which I was visiting for the first time. When I arrived at my hotel, all bags in tow, around 7pm local time, I learned that the hotel didn't have a licence to host foreigners. Because of this, it should never have been available for me to book on Agoda in the first place. So I called Agoda, requesting a refund and that they rebook me into a similar hotel nearby. The first respondent coldly refused my request for a refund, and said he'd pass me onto his superior to deal with the situation. This took an hour - meanwhile, I am sat in a car park in the dark, with three bags, on my first visit to Beijing, in 30ºC heat, paying a small fortune for phone credit to wait on hold with Agoda for what feels like forever. Anyway, long story short (or at least shorter than it could be!), after 4 (FOUR) hours they eventually agreed to a refund, and I ended up in a nearby hotel (albeit slightly more expensive) thanks to the extremely kind manager at the original hotel, who went out of his way to help me, clearly able to see my distress much better than the customer service people at Agoda could, in spite of the language barrier. I also, in this time, tweeted to Agoda's official account, to try to get their attention, to which their response was deleting some of my tweets, like cowards. After a few days I was compensated for 50% of my original outlay on the hotel on top of the refund, which was the only silver lining to this story, though hardly, as in the end it was just a few £ over what the new hotel cost more than the original one plus what I had spent on my SIM card for minutes to call the useless lemons at customer service. I am a frequent traveller all over the world, and I will be never be using Agoda again thanks to their irresponsible mistakes and appalling customer service in this case. My business for the time being will be with sites which have treated me well and have been reliable (as of yet, touch wood!), like Mytrip and Booking.com. Please do NOT bother using Agoda for your travels, unless you like the sound of this experience.
