Multiple concerns with Booking.com: Avoid if you can

Booking.com was my go to platform for hotel and hostel bookings. But of late, I am seeing several issues in their ways of working, causing hurdles to customers

#1 No India customer care number. Booking.com doesn't have any customer care in India. They have a global customer care and Indians are required to call +44, an UK number for any issues. Unless you've international calls enabled, you can't call this number.

If booking.com is getting so much business from India, they should have an office in India and a local customer care number to call to.

#2 No option to indicate hotel denied check in

Many hotels deny check in to booking.com customers- usually happens because they sell the same room on different platforms and sometime overbooking happens and they prefer higher paying customer and deny check in to others.

If we don't check in, hotels report to booking.com that guest didn't show up. Booking.com emails customer to confirm the same- but their email doesn't have an option to say "I reached the hotel but they denied check-in"

#3 No more compensation for denied booking

Back in 2019, when a hostel in Costa Rica denied check-in and I went to another hostel nearby, booking.com paid the price difference as compensation. However, for my recent issue in Mangalore when a hotel denied check in and I had to stay somewhere else spending 800 INR more, booking.com is still waiting for reply from hotel owner and won't offer any compensation 

 #4 Hotels cancel booking last minute to avoid booking.com commission

Many hotels cancel the booking last minute claiming they couldn't charge the card. This is usually a ploy to save 20-25% commission they otherwise have to give to booking.com. I experienced it in Fiji. Got a msg while I was on the way to hotel that booking is cancelled, once I reach they took the money and gave the room. I didn't lose anything, but booking.com lost its commission.

#5 No support for Indian payment options such as UPI, debit card etc

Only international creditcards and some more modes like PayPal are accepted. 

#6 Booking.com has no authority over hotels, can't reach the owner if staff doesn't reply

When I said hotel in Mangalore didn't entertain the booking and didn't let me check in, all booking.com twitter support could do was send them an email. One month later, they have no reply from hotel and they don't have any plan B- they can't contact owner directly to escalte, won't remove the hotel from listing or warn other customers.

#7 No punishment for erring hotels

Hotels that deny check in, hotels that don't reply to cusotmer's or booking.com's messages are NOT removed from the platform,other customers are not warned and reviewed are NOT approved if they are extremely critical. So booking.com values hotel partners more than customers- as a customer I might be doing one or two bookings per month, but hotels give 100s of bookings everymonth, so customers are NOT a priority compared to hotel.

#8 No internal coordination

I've raised concerns via twitter about my booking, that hotel has denied check in, but core team is clueless. They still send email asking if I checked in or not. 

In a nutshell, now I've reduced depending on booking.com. I am checking other platforms first