Booked a hotel room through what I thought was the hotel's official website, but turned out to be a sponsored ad from HotelValues that was deceivingly promoted on Google. The room cost about $300 per night and I booked a stay for 2 nights.
After proceeding all the way to the checkout page I was finally given a summary of the charges and noticed another $400 in charges for "service and resort fees." At this point I wanted to cancel the order, so when a dialogue box popped up instructing me to enter a security code that was sent to my phone I closed the page immediately, thinking that without confirming I would not be billed.
Turns out I was wrong and was charged even though I did not confirm my order through HotelValues site. It is beyond egregious that I am being charged MORE THAN AN ENTIRE EXTRA NIGHT'S STAY for some mystery fees that are not even explained in the bill. Not to mention the fact that these fees were hidden until the very last possible second, and then when I tried to cancel the transaction it went through anyways. This is grifting at it's absolute worst.
Claimed loss: $400.00
Desired outcome: I would like a refund and an apology.
This company will scam you with bogus service fees (in my case they were more expensive than the room itself). They also promote themselves in search engines disingenuously to make people think they are booking through a hotel's official site.