I had steeled myself for a battle but bravo to Booking.com for good customer service

Unfortunately, it’s part of the job we do at This is Money that means our stories often focus on bad customer service.

By the time readers come to us for help, they’ve usually exhausted their patience in trying to get a company or organisation to sort their problem.

From our in-depth investigations – such as Tanya Jefferies and Steve Webb’s work on state pension problems – to our individual reporters’ stories, and our consumer champions, Tony Hetherington, Sally Hamilton and Helen Crane, fighting readers’ corners is a key part of what This is Money and our sister newspaper publications do.

But as well as holding companies to account, we also try to give praise where it’s due – to the extent that Helen’s Crane on Case column has a regular slot for this.

In that spirit, I thought I’d share some good customer service that I was on the receiving end of this week. Especially, as I had steeled myself for battle on the issue but instead ended up having it resolved quickly and fairly.

Last minute: After our overnight stay was cancelled by the host at short notice and we had to pay more for somewhere else, I had to complain to Booking

Last weekend, I travelled back from holiday on the south-west Atlantic coast of France with my wife and two daughters, taking a couple of days to road trip our way home.

On Saturday, we planned to dodge the changeover day traffic madness by spending a day at the beach and later go just a few hours from where we’d been staying in Les Landes – a region of endless sandy beaches, laidback towns and good surf that I highly recommend – to a town called St Jean d’Angely.

One of the great benefits of the internet for travellers is the ease of finding places to stay a bit off the beaten track nowadays and I’m a fan of using Booking.com to do that, as it offers self-catering properties to rent for the night as well as hotels.

Back in the last week of June, I booked a charming looking small two-bedroom house in the French town for Saturday night for £84 – pretty good value for a family of four, especially as with a whole property you can also avoid the cost of a meal out.

But late last week, I had a message from the property owner, telling me that the bed in the second bedroom was broken and while it would hopefully be fixed in time, they wanted to let me know and offer me the chance to cancel and find somewhere else.

I replied to say I didn’t want to do that at short notice, as it was difficult and expensive to find somewhere else. We agreed that we would still come stay and use the sofa bed instead if need be.

I sent another few messages to check up on things and expected to arrive as planned, but then at 2am on Saturday morning the owner messaged and told me I could not stay, and they were cancelling.

I checked on Booking and it was not showing it as cancelled for me. So, I replied and said that we needed to stay and were happy with the sofa bed, as we had no other accommodation at such short notice – just hours before we were due to arrive.

The property owner claimed they could not host us, as they had made a claim on insurance (presumably for lost income due to the damaged bed) and refused to let us stay.

We had no choice but to find alternative accommodation, which we luckily did nearby via Booking, but that set us back £171 – £87 more than our original cost and we hadn’t even had that initial reservation money back.

As you can imagine, I was determined to get both my money back and the extra difference in price for our night’s stay, which seemed fair.

However, I mentally prepared myself for one of those painful, protracted customer service battles to do so – to the extent that I told Helen on Tuesday morning that I may have a Crane on the Case for her.

But here’s the thing: I contacted Booking via its customer service chat on Tuesday at 1.51pm outlining the situation and at 2.46pm I got a message back.

This apologised for the host not honouring our reservation, gave a full refund to my card free of charge and said it would be putting the £87 difference into my Booking wallet, which could be either used on future reservations or withdrawn to my bank account.

This was a speedy and simple resolution that meant I wasn’t left out of pocket and while I know from the odd story past that this isn’t always the case, I take my hat off to Booking for its great customer service in this situation. Bravo.

Gallic charm: Our expected night in the town of St Jean d’Angely didn’t happen

PS After my last holiday at Easter, I wrote about how some overseas cash machines now seem to be charging us hefty flat fees for getting money out – even if you have a card offering fee-free overseas withdrawals.

This has happened in both Austria and France with my Starling bank card – which offers no-fee overseas spending and cash. Readers replied to say they had noticed this happening to them too.

Some digging revealed that it’s just some overseas banks doing this and cashing in on a post-Brexit loophole to sting Britons.

Last time it happened to me in France was with Credit Agricole, but the good news is that I found at least one French bank that doesn’t do this: I got money out fee-free at Societe General and got €100 for £85.93 with no fees. 

A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk