I booked two nights at Rydges at Hunter valley in Australia. When booking, I thought I was within the online reservation department of Rydges and agreed to pay 880 for two nights.. Lo and behold $1227 leaves my bank. I called within minutes only to be told it was non-refundable. Mental. $400 worth of fraudulent fees.

The operator offered me 10% back as a gesture of goodwill. I agreed (I stupidly thought it was all of my fault and that I didn’t read the price properly). But then I stewed on it all night, and read some fellow reddits (bless you all 😂). The next morning I was fuming. I called my bank, who advised they might be able to help me get the elevated fees back. They encouraged me to write an email to GuestReservations. I also called the hotel itself who advised me they legally need to refund me - it’s not legal in Australia to not offer a refund so far out from the booking itself.

With this in mind, I sent an email to GuestReservations. No reply. I called GuestReservations the next day. Enter the most painful 2 hours of my life. Annoying background noise on their end, a time delay, and a passive aggressive operator who kept trying to get me to audibly agree to cancel. I kept repeating “only if I get my money back.” I didn’t want to cancel, lose my money, and then have to rebook and pay for more accommodation!

After a lot of back and forth, and repeating myself to the point where I honestly wanted to cry, she advised that I had lost the right to dispute because I had accepted 10%. I reminded her of the Australian laws regarding refunds on cancellations, and the reason for cancelling in the first place was fraudulent charges in the way of taxes and service fees they had tacked on. Finally she advised that she would need permission from the hotel for me to cancel and get a refund. I advised her that I had already gotten a permission from them to cancel and the hotel wasn’t impressed with their ways. She advised that she needed to speak to them herself. I refused to end the call. There was no way I could trust her calling me back or even ringing the hotel. And I could not handle having to ring GuestReservations back and start my story from scratch.

She returned from hold and told me the hotel wasn’t picking up. Lies. I then told her I would only end the call if she sent me an email confirming everything we had spoken about and also outstanding items needed before I received my refund. I stayed on the phone until I received this email. Then I ended the call and called the hotel myself. They advised they had just actually received contact from them and insisted they refund me. Two days later, I received a full refund of $1227.

It’s possible to get your money back albeit painful. Just do what I did (except DO NOT accept the initial 10% refund). Ensure you get the hotel on your side - they hate GuestReservations so it won’t be hard.