Hotel Booking Nightmare (Or, Avoid hotels.com - Seriously)

So, I looped back this morning. Reservation still was MIA, so booked it again, same darned problem. Seriously?!? Call customer care, they're unable to find it (or the hotel I was trying to book!), send me back to the "other customer care" office. Hmmm. Other care finds the reservations, forces a confirmation email to be sent, but then they proceed to tell me that I'm going to have to pay the "non-refundable" $5 booking fee for the duplicate reservation. Squeeze me? WTFover? Demand to speak to a supervisor.

Connect to a supervisor, the call drops (I think our bad VOIP at work). Cell phone rings, it's the supervisor *whew*. I explain the problem, demand immediate cancellation of both reservations because they suck (yes I told her that hotels.com sucks completely). She cancels the duplicate and then tries to talk me out of canceling the original, then finally relents. Both cancellations are processed, I receive confirmation emails a few minutes later. So, now I need to watch like a hawk to make sure I don't get charged $5 or $10 for booking fees.

If You Book with hotels.com

If you ignore my warning and book with hotels.com, here's a few things you should know:
* They have hidden booking fees.
* Cancellation policies vary.
* They usually charge you the full price right away.
* You must cancel via hotels.com, not through the hotel itself.
* They don't always have the best rates.
* You may get charged by hotels.com for canceling, even if you're within the cancellation policy of the hotel.
* Each hotel maintains its own hotels.com cancellation policy, separate from the hotel's actual cancellation policy.
* What you gain in pricing, you will lose in customer service and easy of reservation management.
* They outsource/offshore their call centers - your experience may vary, though overall it wasn't the worst I've seen.

The Rest of My Booking Troubles (AAA Issues)

So, I finally got all the hotels.com stuff sorted after a couple hours of phone time. Next up, fix the reservation through AAA directly. Or not. My membership is with AAA Mid-Atlantic, and the hotel and rate I wanted was only available through AAA AZ. AAA AZ does not do membership transfers. They said I'd have to sign up for a new membership with them, and then would have to talk to AAA Mid-Atlantic about canceling and getting a partial refund. I called AAA Mid-Atlantic and they were astounded by this. AAA AZ recommended waiting until my current membership expired before signing up with them. Anyway...

The problem, then, was this: I couldn't book the hotel+rate through AAA Mid-Atlantic because they didn't see the hotel. I couldn't book the hotel+rate online through AAA AZ because I didn't have a AAA AZ membership. So, I ended up calling the AAA AZ travel line and, thankfully, they were able to hook me up. Per AAA AZ and AAA Mid-Atlantic, I'll likely not be able to use their respective web sites for booking travel for the foreseeable future, and will instead have to call. This is a bit of a pain, but whatever. It's rare that I need to go through their site anyway.

Long story short, after an hour on the phone, back and forth, I got my hotel booked at the same rate as hotels.com, and I have a confirmation number. Unfortunately, I still do not have a confirmation email for the hotel. So, I'm going to have to call them from the road to confirm that they have my reservation. I absolutely refuse to show up with only a confirmation number and no proof of the rate (which was much better than the AAA rate published on the hotel's own web site). I have a sneaking suspicion that I may still end up being screwed here. We'll see...