Molouk Y. Ba-Isa Saudi Gazette When is a guarantee not a guarantee? Last weekend my family found out when we suffered an unfortunate incident on our trip to the Dubai Shopping Festival (DSF). One of the most popular events in the Dubai calendar, DSF is in its 18th year. Thanks to the Shopping Festival, hotels and furnished apartments are booked above 70 percent capacity throughout the entire month of January and finding a place to stay on the weekend is a real challenge. Knowing this, we booked a serviced apartment at Dubai's Address Properties well in advance. The SR5400 fee was a bargain for a six night visit to DSF. The terms of the booking were that fifty percent of the due fees for the apartment would be taken before arrival with the remainder paid on arrival. As we got closer to the travel date and the charge to our credit card was never made, we began to worry. An online search showed that accommodation similar to ours was now being booked for three times the rate quoted to us. Contact was made with Booking.com, the travel site through which we'd reserved the apartment. They listened to our concerns and contacted the manager of the property, Mr. Kirill, who assured them that there was no problem at all. The Address Properties would make the full charge to our credit card on arrival. All the communication was well documented through email and we once again looked forward to the trip. Then, immediately after arrival in Dubai, disaster struck. While we were still at the airport, we received notice by email from The Address Properties that our bank had declined the charge to our credit card and one minute later our reservation was cancelled. A quick call to our bank gave us the report that there never had been an attempt to charge our credit card. With Dubai hotels fully reserved except at the very high end, would we be sleeping in the street? We contacted Booking.com in distress. Hearing what had just happened and looking in their records at the history of the case, Harold Allaway with the Booking.com Customer Service Team contacted The Address Properties' management and put us on conference call. It was immediately clear that the serviced apartment had simply been given to another customer for a higher rate. The Booking.com representative remained polite on the news, but he was determined. Either The Address Properties would find another place for us to stay or Booking.com would do so. After a bitter, ugly conversation, Kirill at The Address Properties agreed to rent us a different apartment for the week. It was an apartment on the Palm Jumeirah, far from our preferred location and it wasn't serviced, but at least we weren't going to be sleeping at the airport. It was also more expensive, about SR120 more per night. Shortly after the call was over and we were at the new location, we found an email from Booking.com with a surprise. They would refund to us the price difference between the original reservation and where we'd actually stayed. It was welcome news. Interestingly, the same credit card which had supposedly been declined by our bank in paying for the SR5400 reservation was magically accepted by The Address Properties for paying for the more expensive apartment rental. Guaranteed reservations should be a contract between the property and the guest, but it's clear that The Address Properties in Dubai didn't see it that way. Thankfully Booking.com did.
