Do NOT use Prestigia

I had booked a hotel for an upcoming trip, but leading up to it, I monitored prices on Google to see if a better option would open up. One day, the hotel I wanted appeared for a very low price, so I booked it through Prestigia. Although I had looked up Prestigia before booking and only found negative feedback, I decided it was worth the risk since I still had a week to cancel my previous hotel reservation.

Boy, was I wrong. The day I made the booking, I called the hotel to confirm my reservation. They kept saying no, but mentioned it sometimes took 24 hours to appear in their system. I waited 48 hours, but still, no reservation.

So, I tried calling Prestigia. As others had warned, they don’t pick up. The system said I was first in line, but at the five-minute mark of being on hold, it hangs up on you.

I then emailed them. The only positive was they responded within a day. Their excuse was that the room I booked at that rate wasn’t available anymore, but they offered to switch my reservation to a terrible, run-down, cheap hotel. I told them I would not accept that under any circumstances and demanded they either book me into the hotel I requested, one of the neighboring hotels, or refund me. They kept pushing the lousy hotel, so I insisted on a refund.

It's clear that if I hadn’t stayed on top of this, I would have arrived with nowhere to stay. It seems their scam turns into a bait-and-switch when confronted.

My main issue is that they appear on Google Hotel Search, tricking people. I plan to reach out to Google to report them. Let me know if there are any other steps I can take to get the word out.