I booked this accommodation late at…
I booked this accommodation late at night and didn’t receive a confirmation until much later. Because of this delay, I had no choice but to secure alternative accommodation. Despite the issue being entirely on their side, Azzuri Properties refused to refund my money and insisted the cancellation fee still applies.A cancellation fee should never be enforced when the confirmation is delayed by the provider. This was poor service, zero accountability, and a complete lack of fairness. Businesses shouldn’t keep customers’ money when they fail to deliver the basic service of confirming a booking on time.
To respond to reply:
Thank you for your reply.
I would like to clarify the situation from my perspective.Although you state that you acknowledged the booking internally at 10:58 p.m., I did not receive a Booking.com confirmation email or any usable check‑in information at that time.
As a customer booking through Booking.com, I rely on the platform’s confirmation to know that the reservation is valid and secure. Without that confirmation, I had no proof of a confirmed stay, no check‑in instructions, and no guarantee that the accommodation was actually available to me.
Because I had no confirmation that evening, I had to find alternative accommodation for the night. My priority at that point was my wellbeing and ensuring I had somewhere safe to stay. I requested the cancellation at 7:49 a.m. as soon as I was able to, and this was a direct result of the delayed confirmation, not a change of mind.
I also want to clarify the wider context. That night, I had to arrange four different accommodations because the first three bookings either cancelled, delayed confirmation, or were not available to let me in on arrival. Only the fourth property accepted the booking promptly and provided a usable stay. From those three problematic bookings, two properties have already agreed to refund the money. Azzuri Properties is the only one refusing to refund, despite the booking not being confirmed or usable in time.
This clearly shows that my expectations and actions were reasonable, and that the issue is specific to how this reservation was handled.The information you sent at 11:56 p.m. was still too late for me to rely on the booking. By that time, I had already been waiting without any confirmation and had no way of knowing whether the reservation was genuinely secured.
No reasonable customer is expected to chase confirmations at midnight.
Cancellation fees apply when a confirmed booking is cancelled by the guest. In this case, the booking was not confirmed in a timeframe that made it usable, and therefore the cancellation fee should not apply.
I acted reasonably based on the information available to me at the time.I appreciate your explanation, but from my perspective the service was not delivered in a usable timeframe, which is why I am continuing to pursue this through the appropriate channels.
Resposta da Azzurri Properties
Hi Monica, we are sorry that you were disappointed, but the timeline described in your review does not match our records.
Your reservation was made through Booking.com at 10:58 p.m. and we acknowledged your booking and advised that your guest portal and stay information would be sent within 60 minutes. This information was provided at 11:56 p.m (58 minutes later and within the timeframe communicated).
The accommodation remained reserved and fully available for your stay. The booking was never rejected or cancelled by us, and we received no further messages from you that evening indicating that you no longer wished to proceed.
Your request for free cancellation was received at 7:49 a.m. the following morning, after you had independently arranged alternative accommodation.
Booking.com is responsible for issuing its own platform confirmation emails. Any delay in receiving a Booking.com email would need to be investigated with Booking.com and was separate from the booking acknowledgement and guest information sent by Azzurri Properties.
As the accommodation had been reserved exclusively for you and the cancellation request fell outside the agreed cancellation terms, the applicable policy remained in place. We also advised that we would review any formal communication from Booking.com confirming that the reservation qualified for a full refund.
We are sorry that you consider this outcome unfair. However, the cancellation conditions were clearly displayed when the reservation was made. Had you contacted us that evening to explain that you wished to cancel because you had not received the information expected, we may have been able to review the circumstances before alternative accommodation was booked.
