'You feel scammed,' Saskatoon traveller says after arriving in Mexico to find rental double-booked

A Saskatoon family says their dream of a sunny holiday vacation turned into a frustrating nightmare after an online booking site double-booked their accommodations.

Cinthya Wiersma and her three children were looking forward to a vacation in Puerto Vallarta during the Christmas holiday, but arrived to discover the accommodations they'd booked were not available.

What followed next was a mad scramble to find another place to stay, putting a damper on their trip, she said.

"Just the whole ordeal of having to deal with that was really stressful, and it started off our vacation with that whole cloud over us," said Wiersma.

They had booked accommodation through a third-party website, Booking.com, but when they arrived, security told them that they were not listed as tenants. They discovered the property had been rented out until April. 

"So I was kind of embarrassed and scared at that moment, really frustrating," said Wiersma. 

Armed with a smartphone, Wiersma transformed the sidewalk into her makeshift office, orchestrating a vacation rescue mission.

"I was really frustrated. I was hot and I was sweating because of the nerves and the angst that you feel. You feel scammed, you feel robbed," she said.

She contacted Booking.com. After about a half hour, they offered a refund and said they'd help her find another place — or, if Wiersma found another place to stay, they would pay the difference on the rental.  

After almost five hours of standing on the curb, she and her family were able to find another place to stay. However, they ended up spending more than $5,000 Cdn on their new accommodations — considerably more than the $3,700 Cdn they'd originally paid.

LISTEN | Cinthya Wiersma told her story to host Stefani Langenegger on CBC's Morning Edition: 

Property 'overbooked': company

When contacted by CBC, a spokesperson for Booking.com said that the condo Wiersma booked could not accommodate her family because the property was "overbooked."

The company will pay Wiersma the difference between the two bookings once they receive an invoice for the stay, spokesperson Sage Hunter said.

The property has reached out to Booking.com and asked the company to remove the accommodation from the website due to the overbooking, said Hunter, and Booking.com is working to do that. 

"As per our contract with the accommodations, all our bookings should be instantly confirmed," she said.

"But due to accommodations selling their rooms via various platforms, in some cases, if the accommodations forget to close their availability on Booking.com after their rooms were sold out, that will cause overbooking."

However, Wiersma said that when she contacted the number on the listing to get in touch with the property manager, the person on the other end said that they don't have any listings on Booking.com. 

She's still waiting for Booking.com to cover the difference she paid for the new rental accommodation.

She also showed CBC that the listing for the condo was still up on the website and available for bookings as of Thursday, even though she had been told it's rented out until April.  

'Shouldn't be acceptable': consultant

Vanessa lafolla, who works with the company Anti-Fraud Intelligence Consulting, described the situation as "terrible." 

"That's just something that shouldn't be acceptable. They should be able to verify the availability of that booking and take responsibility for the availability of that booking," she said. 

While she said it is good that Booking.com is taking responsibility and sending refunds to Wiersma, the company should have done more to help her immediately find other accommodation, so she and her family didn't have to spend hours standing on the street with their luggage, said lafolla.

People should be able to trust third-party booking sites, lafolla said, but she recommends that travellers do research on sites before booking through them, including checking reviews to see what other customers have experienced.

She also recommends looking for sites that have teams to deal with any issues, and have policies and procedures to take responsibility if things go wrong.

"That's a good indication that the company may be more worthy of your trust than another company," said lafolla.

Wiersma said in the future, she'll try to contact property managers directly to confirm a reservation — and may stick to all-inclusive trips and hotels instead.

Her experience "is a warning to people who have just the right amount" to pay for their booking, she said — "because then you're stuck and having to pay that much more."