Booking.com under fire over failure to refund Australian man’s $3800 double-booking error

A Melbourne man who made a simple but costly error while booking a flight has been waiting eight months for a refund.

Every Wednesday morning for the past eight months, Scott Mitchell has logged onto his computer and sent an email.

He is taking on third-party aggregator, Booking.com, over a double booking which left him out of pocket $3,800.

“I’m being dogged in my pursuit of it,” he told 7NEWS.

In December, Mitchell purchased a last-minute United Airlines flight so his son’s partner could join the family on a trip to the US.

When he did not receive a confirmation email for the booking, he booked the same flight again.

However, both payments ended up going through.

“I checked both Booking.com and United Airlines return policies to make sure if there was a double booking they were refundable,” he said.

United Airlines’ system spotted the double booking and refunded the money within 24 hours.

But not into Mitchell’s back account.

“(Online travel agency) Gotogate do the bookings for Booking.com and Gotogate had the refund, and they had elected to put a travel credit against the flight not a refund,” he said.

Eight months later, the money is still with the booking agency as a credit.

After spending hours speaking with chat bots, he has now enlisted the help of Adam Glezer from Consumer Champion.

“It’s been an absolute disaster, and a game of cat and mouse,” Glezer said.

“If you book through a third party and there are issues with refunds, more often than not it’s going to be a lot more problematic than when you book direct.”

Glezer has dealt with similar cases and wants to see more transparency from third party agencies.

“If he booked direct not only would he have got his money back, but it would have been a painless experience rather than going through months and months of the whole ‘he said, she said’,” he said.

Booking.com told 7NEWS it was “sorry to hear” about Mitchell’s situation.

“In this specific instance where the customer has made a duplicate booking, they need to request a refund based on the terms and conditions that the airline will then need to authorise,” the company said.

“We have followed up to offer our assistance in this matter.

“Flights offered on Booking.com are via our flights partner Etraveli and their brand Gotogate. When a customer books a flight on Booking.com, the booking process transparently shows that Gotogate provides the flight reservation and that customers enter an agreement with our partner.

“In addition, the detailed terms and conditions as well as fare rules by the airline are also provided before the final booking and payment step.”

Mitchell said he will never use a third-party service such as Booking.com again and will instead book direct.