Only when The i Paper approached the travel website about his case did the company return the money
One of the world’s biggest travel websites refused for months to refund a customer who needed to cancel his holiday after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, The i Paper can reveal.
Booking.com had said it would not return approximately £1,300 to Anthony Giles, 70, even after being provided with evidence that he had an inoperable brain tumour.
In an email to the company, his wife Marguerite described Booking.com as “completely heartless”.
The couple were finally provided with a refund after The i Paper contacted Booking.com – five months after they first tried to cancel their trip.
Anthony booked flights to Seville and Frankfurt through Booking.com last year before doctors diagnosed him with glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain cancer. He and Marguerite, 66, were due to fly in June and July.
In April, when it became clear his health would leave them unable to travel, she spent weeks trying unsuccessfully to secure a refund from Booking.com. “They said it wasn’t a good enough reason,” she told The i Paper. “What other reason could be better than that?”
The money from the refund was “not the point”, she added: “It’s the principle.”
When this paper approached Booking.com for comment, the company arranged the refund “as a gesture of goodwill on this occasion”.
The couple are one example among several customers who have complained to The iPaper about Booking.com’s refunds policy and customer service.
The website provides reservations for more than three million properties in over 200 countries. Last year, its parent company Booking Holdings made more than $5bn in profit.
A Finnish man arrived at an apartment in Riga, reserved on Booking.com, to find that it did not exist. He and his children had to sleep in their car overnight – before being subject to a further scam attempt.
And a British woman has contacted the police after her email account was hacked and used to make fraudulent hotel reservations in her name – but Booking.com failed to stop the payment, enabling the hackers to gain access to the property. “They’re an absolute shitshow,” she said.
Action Fraud has warned that between June 2023 and September 2024 it received 532 reports that customers using the platform had been targeted by fraudsters using hotel email accounts to send phishing messages.
Commenting on The i Paper‘s findings, Rory Boland, editor of consumer group Which? Travel, said: “It’s disappointing that Booking.com seems to fail to deliver even the basic level of customer service when things go wrong for its customers through no fault of their own.”
Fighting for a refund
In November 2024, three months after making the flight reservations, Anthony Giles found out that he has brain cancer. Anthony, who is British but has lived in Australia for more than 20 years, is now in a palliative care home in Queensland.
When he and his wife Marguerite first received the diagnosis, they still hoped to travel. By April this year, however, Anthony’s condition had declined so much that any prospect of their final adventure together was gone.
On 2 April, Marguerite tried to cancel the flights – one with British Airways, the other with Lufthansa – and used the chat facility on Booking.com’s site to seek a refund.
“I said I wanted to cancel them because my husband had terminal brain cancer. The girl [messaged] me back on the live chat and said, ‘I hope he gets better soon,’” said Marguerite.
“I said, ‘Terminal means he’s not going to get better.’ She said that they’d have to get in touch with the airline to see if we could cancel.”
By mid-May, the couple had received no update from Booking.com. Marguerite spoke to another customer service representative who, she said, told her that according to their system, she had decided not to cancel the flights. “I said, ‘Why wouldn’t I cancel it? My husband’s got terminal brain cancer. We can’t fly.’”
Marguerite then tried via email and was told she had to send proof of her claim, including their wedding certificate (because the reservation had been made by her husband) and medical documents.
In an email seen by this paper, a representative for Booking.com’s partner company GoToGate, which handles flight bookings for the site, told Marguerite “it is not possible” for the company to request a refund from the airline “against indicated reasons”, adding: “You may also contact the airline directly in order to check if a full refund could be granted from their end”.
Marguerite said British Airways and Lufthansa “both told me that it’s up to Booking.com because they’re a third party”.
“I’d had enough by then,” she said. “I think it’s completely wrong to do that to somebody who’s is going through what we’re going through.
“I gave up, because I thought, I’m just fighting a losing battle.”
Multiple companies involved in booking
The case exposes a complex landscape for customers when there are several companies involved in a booking. Airlines can more easily address refunds when tickets are bought directly from their website. In this instance, all companies complied with their own rules and regulations, but provided different explanations for what happened.
Booking.com and GoToGate said that airlines are responsible for decisions about refunds.
A spokesperson for Booking.com said it had submitted refund requests, which were turned down by the airlines. A spokesperson added: “Our terms and conditions specify that refund policies are set directly by the airlines and refunds are issued once received from the airline.”
GoToGate said refund requests are “processed with the airlines in line with their respective policies” and that the airlines had said “they do not allow refunds for medical reasons and recommended the customer contact their insurance provider instead”.
However, British Airways said neither Booking.com or GoToGate telephoned them to discuss the case and they would have authorised a refund if they had. Lufthansa did not respond to a request for comment.
Scammed in Tenerife
Vicky Blackwood is still seeking answers after reporting fraud to Booking.com. In June, on the last day of her holiday in Tenerife, (which she booked through a different company), she used the unsecured Wi-Fi of the hotel.
This is when Vicky believes hackers gained access to her email, because when she next logged in three days later, she had received hundreds of spam emails. Among them was an email from Booking.com thanking her for two reservations in Leeds – for that night.
But she had not made these bookings. One was made through her email, another through a distorted version of her email address, about which she also received messages.
The payments of around £250 were pending. “So I rang Booking.com and was on the phone for an hour and a half.” Customer service told her they could stop the payments but would need to liaise with the two venues first.
When Vicky managed to reach the owner of one of the two properties, she said: “He said I can’t do anything about stopping the payment because it has to go through Booking.com first.” Shortly after their message exchange, the owner contacted her again: “He said, ‘You’ll never guess what: somebody’s turned up for the booking.’”
The payment had gone through on Booking.com, despite Vicky’s report. She rang the police and her bank. The property owner, meanwhile, phoned the fraudster, and ordered him out of his house.
Twelve hours later, it was the bank – not Booking.com – that refunded her the money. She later phoned Booking.com, to find out what they had done to try to address the issues.
“I got through to some call centre and I began to explain my situation, and they put the phone down on me,” she said. She rang back, spoke to someone else and demanded to be put through to a manager. “The phone went dead again.”
Vicky has removed her account and wants the company to review its security processes.
The company told The i Paper it is reviewing this case.
Left sleeping in a car in Latvia
When Dr Erkko Valimaki drove with his family into Riga, Latvia, last month, he was intending to stay one night at the apartment, on their way to Lithuania. But as he arrived in the late evening, he realised there was no street number on the address provided. He tried to call the venue but the phone number did not work: “The operator said it’s not a proper number.”
Erkko attempted to contact the venue through the chat facility on the site. “No answer. Nothing.” He searched the street, asking passersby if they knew where the apartment was to no avail.
“So we spent the night in the car,” he said. “I slept maybe two hours.” On his return he tried to contact Booking.com’s customer service and was advised to contact the venue directly. “But if it doesn’t exist, how can they help you?”
A couple of days later, a man started contacting Erkko through WhatsApp, saying he was from Booking.com and would refund the money. “He wanted me to download an application and fill in all my details.” As Erkko began to do this, he realised that this too was a scam: the app was designed for sending money, not receiving it.
He received a refund from Booking.com but said he was left wondering how properties that do not exist are allowed onto their site in the first place. The apartment is no longer listed on the site. Booking.com said it is still investigating what happened.
Scams ‘slipping through the net’
Which? said its recent investigation into accommodation that is listed on the site but does not exist found that “scams are slipping through the net” on Booking.com, and “leaving unsuspecting customers out of pocket for up to thousands of pounds”.
It called on the site to require accommodation providers to give proof of identity.
Regarding the customer service issues overall, a Booking.com representative said: “Ensuring that our customers are supported throughout their trip is one of our top priorities. Considering the millions of transactions we facilitate on our platform every day, issues remain rare, however we are always sorry to hear if a case has not been managed to the standards we strive for.
“We continually invest in customer services technology and training to make it easier and quicker for customers to get a response and resolution.”
