Booking.con?

[Barquentine]

Booking.com’s Terms & Conditions state that, for a ‘non-refundable’ room a property may cancel your reservation or charge you the full cost of your reservation for a no-show. Booking.con warns customers to check the property’s own terms and conditions for its cancellation policies.
Does this mean that if you turn up at your hotel one day late, the hotel can cancel your entire reservation and take full payment for the full period of your reservation? There are no terms & conditions on website of Hotel Joli in Florence, Italy.
‘No show’ is not defined on the Booking.com website. The ‘fine print’ & FAQ pages for Hotel Joli on Booking.com’s platform do not answer these questions.
We were delayed one day by a flight cancellation. We kept Hotel Joli, Florence informed by email throughout (they replied to our first email but later emails conveniently went to their ‘spam’ folder).Hotel Joli cancelled our entire booking. We had a peculiar email from Booking.com with only two options to reply with – buttons labelled “I stayed at the property” or “I didn’t stay at the property”.
When we arrived, Chiara, the hotel owner was so apologetic. Booking.com had made this mistake many times before – telling her to cancel guests’ bookings. She found us an alternative hotel for the two nights she had relet our rooms, assured us she would only charge for the one night we had missed, and said we could stay with her the last night for free. In fact, Chiara and Hotel Joli actually charged us for all four nights. She told us to deal with Booking.com if we had any complaints. Booking.com told us to sort it out with the hotel. Booking.con explained that the last night which we had paid for was ‘free’ in the sense that Hotel Joli could have charged us twice for it but chose to waive these additional charges.
We pointed out that hotel properties whose activities they facilitate via their website are entitled either to take full payment or cancel our booking. They remain defiant and dismissive and explain our contract is with the hotel and we have to sort it out with Hotel Joli. They tell us to refer to the property’s terms and conditions. Where are these?
We have asked Booking.com many times to tell us where to find Hotel Joli’s terms and conditions, or send us a link or a copy since there are no terms and conditions on that hotel’s website (though they have had time since we started this complaint to draft and post some). If Booking.com could point us to where it says a hotel can both take your money & cancel your rooms then we might have given up by now. On the contrary, Booking.com have replied that they have approached the property a number of times on our behalf but Hotel Joli refuses to refund monies wrongfully taken from our bank account. These approaches may be recognition that there are grounds for Booking.com to try to assist us.
Does anyone else have similar experiences and does anyone know of regulations or statutes governing the responsibilities of intermediaries (Booking.con claim they are not responsible for the property’s actions, they are merely intermediaries). We emphasised that Booking.com is facilitating potentially fraudulent activity but their approach is to send automated, anodyne responses expecting that we will eventually give up.
What would be the best way to disseminate our experiences as widely as possible to warn other travellers to avoid the fleecing we have experienced. The wry observation of the irony that all this happened in the hometown of Macchiavelli and that Chiara is the spitting image of Cosimo de’Medici has not mitigated our disappointment or financial loss.

[zebo]

I've used booking.com dozens of times with no problem. We once arrived at a hotel to find the pool not in use, Georgia and very hot, they, the hotel, agreed to cancel our booking. Our daughter once had a problem whereby she cancelled a booking within the time frame but was still charged, that was sorted out by the website. Hope you can get it sorted satisfactorily.

[Chinajan]

The T & C appear in a click link to a pop up when you go to make a reservation on the Hotel Joli website.

Here they are:

Terms and conditions
Double Room
Double Room
Cancellation Policy:

If cancelled or modified up to 3 days before date of arrival, no fee will be charged. If cancelled or modified later, the total price of the reservation will be charged. In case of no-show, the total price of the reservation will be charged.

Child Policy:

All children are welcome. All children under 2 years stay free of charge for children's cots/cribs. All children under 16 years are charged EUR 20 per night for extra beds. All further older children or adults are charged EUR 20 per night for extra beds. The maximum number of extra beds in a room is 1.

Internet:

WiFi is available in all areas and is free of charge.

Meal plan:

Breakfast included

Parking:

Public parking is possible at a location nearby (reservation is not needed) and costs EUR 23 per day.

Pets:

Pets are not allowed.

The hotel reserves the right to pre-authorise credit cards prior to arrival.
Prepayment:

No deposit will be charged.

Excluded:

€ 2.50 City tax per person per night

Included:

10 % VAT

The Fine Print

Just 200 metres from Santa Maria Novella Station, Hotel Jolì is set in a early 19th-century building in Florence’s centre. A buffet breakfast with hot and cold food is served daily in the breakfast hall. Each room at Jolì Hotel is decorated with light colours and either wooden or wrought-iron furniture. They are air conditioned and feature satellite TV. Some also feature a balcony. Staff is available 24 hours a day. Guests can read a newspaper in the lobby or relax on the furnished terrace right next to the breakfast room. The hotel is a 10-minute walk from the Florence Cathedral and 200 metres from the Fortezza Da Basso exhibition centre.

If you expect to arrive outside check-in hours, please inform the property in advance.

Please inform Hotel Jolì in advance of your expected arrival time. You can use the Special Requests box when booking, or contact the property directly with the contact details provided in your confirmation.

[atalanta]

Buy a copy of the Times on Saturday, and you will find a column called "Travel Doctor". Julia Brookes offers advice, and often sorts out complaints like this. It is amazing how quickly the travel and car-hire companies and hotels sort things out when she asks them to. Could it be for fear of bad publicity appearing in a major newspaper ?

[jno]

somebody does that in the Saturday Telegraph too.