Third party booking sites are a great deal for the customer, but for the employee? Not so much.

A hotel employee near a certain famous mouse-themed park spent a shift walking a guest through exactly why that is, one painful policy explanation at a time.

But the more the employee tried to reason with the customer, the more agitated the customer got.

The whole thing turned into a massive headache for everyone involved.

Keep reading for the full story.

3rd parties are awesome!!

People don’t realize we can’t extend them, adjust the date, change the rate with them if something goes wrong.

And with most properties, if you decide to stay longer you have to go through the whole checkout/checkin process and do the incidental authorization again.

This hotel employee sets the scene for a frustrating customer interaction.

Had a guest come down and wanted to extend their nights. I told them I’d take a look and see what I can do.

Now mind you, I’m at a property that’s near a certain mouse-themed park and it’s a fairly nice property, so we have a big incidental hold because we have actual expensive things in the rooms.

But giving this guest what they want would prove more difficult than anticipated.

So guest comes down and asks to extend. It’s a 3rd party reservation, and I inform them if they want to extend they can book through us, but we will have to reauthorize their card for room and tax AND incidentals.

The incidental IS higher than the room rate. Again, nice property and location.

He’s not a fan of that and leaves.

That isn’t the last he would see of this customer, though.

Comes back an hour later and says he booked through the 3rd party again and wants to check out and check back in.

First off, no, I haven’t run audit yet. And second, I tell him I will have to authorize his card for the incidental again.

The customer throws a fit, yet again.

He of course is shocked and said that if he had booked with me he’d have to do the incidental again, not if he booked with the 3rd party.

I look at him and tell him, “No, we have to get new authorization for ANY reservation. Booking through us would have made it easier if you needed to extend.”

Well, he doesn’t want to do the night now and tells me to cancel the reservation.

Again, this would prove more difficult than expected.

I have to explain now how booking through a 3rd party means I have no control over cancellation, and even then we can’t cancel because he’s within the 48 hour cancellation period.

So he can either eat the cost of the room or put down another deposit.

As is often the case, the customer refuses to take accountability for their role.

Of course this is my fault for him booking a room through a 3rd party.

He says he will call his credit card and report fraud. And then scurries away.

All this of course goes in my pass down.

But yeah, 3rd party reservations are great if you are 1000% committed to the timeline you present. If something changes, as we all know in life stuff changes, they are a frickin’ nightmare.

What a frustrating interaction.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a hotel guest who complained about noise from an event, then reported the employee who agreed with him.

Redditors chime in with their thoughts.

Do customers really think the people in charge haven’t thought things through?

When you work in a certain industry, it tends to teach you some valuable tips and tricks.

In slight defense of the customer, some of these systems can be complicated.

This user knows how frustrating interactions like this can be.

The thing about third party reservations is that the savings feel great until the moment they don’t.

This guest saved a few dollars and spent an entire evening at the front desk trying to undo decisions the hotel had no authority to touch.

Every policy the employee explained turned out to be exactly as real as advertised. The incidental hold applied. The cancellation window had closed. Booking through a third party a second time did not create a loophole.

None of this was a surprise to anyone except the guest.

If anything good came out of this story, it was a valuable lesson about always reading the terms and conditions.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a customer complaint that led to them losing their VIP status.