With all of these horror stories of people and third-party sites, I thought I would share a tale of my experience with them and the front desk of a hotel which changed how I deal with hotels in general.

So, about 20 years ago, I worked for a company that had me working all over the state of Florida. Being that I lived on the east coast of Florida, and my company's offices were on the west coast of Florida, they would book my hotels for me, and they *always* used third-party sites. So, one particular week my office sent me down to South Florida to work for the week... arrive on Sunday, check out Saturday. (Didn't leave much time for being home.) This was my preference because I hated having to get up at 1AM, drive 5-6 hours to be on a job in Homestead at 8am then work 10-12 hours.

Things usually went well, except that I always had to deal with the "they don't have my card on file". The first time I argued this point and was explained on how third-party sites work. Ahh.. gotcha. From that point forward, I always made sure the office sent the authorization form ahead of time. Fast-forward a few months later and all hell broke loose. It was a Wednesday and I had just got back to my room after work when I received a phone call from a co-worker... family emergency... he had to go but was scheduled to do a job back in Orlando that could not be re-scheduled. He'd already called the boss, and boss told him to call me. Between the three of us, we worked it out and I was to pack up that night, check out and head home to take care of the job Thursday. I would be staying near home the rest of the week so to cancel the rest of the hotel stay.

Get packed, get loaded, and head to the front desk. Tell them what is going on and the front desk girl told me that if I had booked through the hotel directly, she might have been able to do something due to mitigating circumstances, but there is nothing they can do about the reservation because it was done through a third-party. I told her I didn't care and to just check me out of the room and to cancel the rest of the stay, which she did. She gave me my paperwork and I was on the road.

Fast-forward a few weeks later and the company owner is going over the books and sees the charge for the full week of the room but then sees I left on Wednesday night. He then argues with me because "I should have forced the hotel to refund me for the rest of the stay." I told him to pound sand, not my responsibility and if they wanted to avoid problems like this in the future, let me book my own hotels. I thought I had pissed him off, but two weeks later I received a company credit card in the mail and was given authorization to book my own rooms as I needed...

​

So, now... I still use third-party sites... only to shop for price, availability and location. Once I have that info, I go to the hotel's site directly. I have found that the prices on the hotel's site is about the same as the third-party sites. If it's plus or minus a few dollars, I don't mind. If it's grossly different, I'll call the hotel directly and see if they can do anything about it. I don't get mean or snotty or go Karen on them, I just ask. If they say no, I thank them and choose another place. However, 95% of the time with the properties I choose, the price is close to the 3rd party site.

TL:DR: An experience with a hotel and 3rd party sites has changed how I book hotel rooms and deal with front desk agents.

BTW: Has anyone else been reading this subreddit because of a certain young lady on Youtube shorts? I feel Jessica's pain in some of those skits and sadly admit I was once like some of those "guests" until I grew up...