I can't remember if it was booking.com or some other site like travelocity, but I booked a hotel for work in Dublin, I arrived, and they couldn't find my reservation. After about 30 minutes of the desk staff confusingly clicking around on a computer they 'found' it and I was able to check in. This was a modern hotel too. I stopped using those sites and now only book through the hotel's website, even if it costs more.
For years I was traveling for work, 300+ days a year. I used booking.com almost exclusively and never had this problem.
I did however run into an even worse bug on their platform once where my card got billed, but right after the website crashed and a confirmation never was sent. Naturally, this happened when I had little funds myself.
I called customer support and without a booking number they couldn’t do anything, which I naturally never received…
Thankfully, the money was refunded within 24 hours.
Still I use booking.com, I consider it a great service.
They are not perfect, but they do provide value. My wife does not take showers more than once or twice a year; she takes a bath. Usually twice a day. This is a surprisingly difficult piece of information to find on hotel websites. Booking.com will at least tell you if the property has rooms with bathtubs.
I have resorted to making most reservations by phone, rather than Internet, because it’s the only way to be sure. I don’t like it, it wastes my time, but I have a specific person I can call out who flat-out lied to me if I get there and the room has no bathtub. That is usually enough to get the manager to upgrade me to a room that has the one amenity I specifically requested as a condition of booking.
My city takes its water from a surface reservoir and empties its treated sewage into the same river. And I live in the southeastern US, so we have plenty of rainfall.
I’m not draining an aquifer. Other than the cost of the treated water, there is no practical limit to use (the city is nowhere nearly large enough to stress the supply). There are golf courses near the river that just filter out the silt and pump it directly onto the courses.
