I recently booked a room in Wellington via Booking.com after having clicked through from ShopBack on one of their 10% cashback deals. The booking included a free taxi from Wellington Airport to the hotel provided by Booking.com.
When I went to book the taxi transfer there was no mention of it on the Booking.com website despite my having screenshots of the booking process clearly stating a taxi transfer was included.
After a lot of back and forth with Booking.com on their chat they then dropped this bombshell:
"Upon checking, you made your reservation in partnership with Shopback. This is a partnership promotion with Booking.com, hence, resulting in your booking not being eligible for the free taxi offer. Your reservation should not be in partnership with any promotion and should only be booked directly through Booking.com website or app."
Nowhere in the Booking.com T&Cs for the promotion nor on ShopBack is this restriction explained. I lost a taxi transfer worth $70 to gain a $30 cashback.
Does this sound legit or are Booking.com being slippery? Hopefully the Shopback rep sees this post and comments too.
Finally, to add insult to injury the Booking.com rep suggested cancelling my booking made via Shopback and rebooking directly to receive the free taxi transfer but when I went to do that the offer was no longer available at my selected hotel.
Ugh - that sucks - but the more I have been reading about these cashback things, I will avoid totally (just booking direct through the website - ie not going through the cash back site) if the thing I am purchasing has any promotion etc attached to it because its almost always going to backfire.