Surprising hotwire experience -- Re: Blind-hotel booking cancellation

I normally do not EVER use third-party booking websites, but I'm flying out on Thursday and had to get a hotel for Wednesday night. I decided to try out Hotwire's blind hotel booking on the recommendation of a friend.

The city I'm flying out of did not have a hotel that is in a group I'm a loyalty member of (Hyatt and Hilton) near the airport, or one that had an airport shuttle, so I gave this a shot. Narrowed my search to hotels that had an airport shuttle, of which there were five options on the blind booking. Booked the one with the highest recommendation, it ended up being 15 miles away from the airport, and the shuttle only ran from 8AM-8PM. This was a problem for me as my flight left at 6AM. Normally, I would just fly stand-by on a later flight, but I'm going home to see family for the weekend so want to make the most of it.

Anyways, I called hotwire, first time I'm put on hold for 15 minutes then transferred without notice to the cancellation insurance company. I hang up, call back, on hold for 20 minutes after explaining, another woman picks up says there are no notes in my file. I explain that I've already told two people what is going on and that this is ridiculous, and asked her not to transfer me without my knowledge. She is very kind, looks up my booking and says she understand my case. This is where it gets good, and she tells me something that is unpublished on hotwire. ALL hotwire members are entitled to one rescheduling of a blind booking.

In all honesty, I just expected them to tell me it was not possible and that I was skrewed. Hotwire is notorious for bad business practices, which is why I normally shy away from them, but I was actually very surprised at how I was treated.

I'm only posting this in case anyone else ever finds themselves in a predicament like this. Call hotwire over and over until someone takes the time to talk to you. Tell them you know you are entitled to one blind-booking reschedule. I immediately received the new booking email, and refund email, while on the phone with her. She even took the time to call hotels in the area while I was on hold to make sure they could have me at the airport in time for my flight, came back, told me the name of who she spoke with at the hotel, and that she had my shuttle scheduled for the next morning. Although I probably will not use hotwire in the future, experiences like this really go a long way for a company. Keep up the good work hotwire.


Refund confirmation

TL/DR - Every hotwire member is entitled to one rescheduling of a blind-hotel booking over the life of their account, don't let them bully you into believing there is a true "no refund/cancellation/rescheduling" policy.