StrontiDog

I appreciate the comments, eanj & jagoffee. And I'm glad you've had no problems with Stay123.

It's quite a disheartening feeling to find yourself in a strange town, darkness falling, and have no place to stay after 13+ hours on the road. We had to, quite literally, go form hotel to hotel trying to find one with a vacancy. That has never happened to me, and it does bother me, quite a bit. This was also the first out-of-town trip with my girlfriend, and I can't even make a lousy reservation that actually works? I'm sure she was impressed.

Stay 123 is still in business, I'm just not sure what that may be. I had a Hilton confirmation number and a print-out, it just didn't do any good. They canceled it, anyway, and within half an hour, had already sold the room, the 7-day parking and two slots on the shuttle to the cruise port? I have a little trouble believing that. . .don't you?

You're right about the credit card, but since I had never done business with Stay 123, I used a card I hadn't used in several years, and sure enough, a week after they charged the deposit, it got hit for two fraudulent charges, so I closed the account. That's a heck of a coincidence. . .and shouldn't matter at all. I made the reservations months in advance, and I did call the Hampton Inn to make sure I actually had the reservations for the price Stay123 said it would be. . .which was about half-off the regular website price.

But it's only a good deal if there is an actual reservation that Hampton will honor. It cost me quite a bit more than twice the Stay123 'price' to pay rack rate to a competitor. . .and parking and a taxi to the port.

Stay 123 did offer to refund my deposit. . .if I give them a different credit card account to refund it into. . . .seems the original account has been closed.

Would you go through all this again for a lousy $22.40? I won't.

I booked a park-n-cruise deal with a Hampton Inn in Ft. Lauderdale (Dec 06, 2013) and even though I called the property to make sure I had a reservation, they cancelled it because I wasn't checked-in by 6:00 p.m. and they sold the room to someone else.

At 6:30 p.m. when I showed-up, I had no room, no parking and no shuttle reserved. I'd missed the secret deadline by less than half an hour.

Stay123 doesn't seem to actually sell anything but a $22 surcharge and some fraudulent hits to the credit card after you book. No actual rooms and/or parking-shuttle services are secured. No wonder nobody can match their price. Not supplying any kind of product must really cut-down on overhead.