During my visit to Cappadocia, I chose to stay at Hilton Avanos for one night. I had no issues whatsoever with the hotel’s service, cleanliness, or rooms; everything was excellent. However, the following incident is the reason I am giving the hotel only one star.
I made my reservation through Trip.com and called the hotel two days before my arrival to confirm that there were no issues with my booking. I checked in at around 9:00 p.m. and went to the reception desk at 4:30 a.m. the following morning to check out. The receptionist told me that payment had been received for only one of the two rooms I had booked and that the other room remained unpaid. I explained that there must have been a mistake and showed her both the invoice issued by Trip.com and my credit card statement confirming that I had paid the full amount. Despite all the evidence I provided, she continued to insist that the payment had not reached the hotel and, even worse, treated me as though I were attempting to leave without paying.
When I realized that the issue was not going to be resolved this way, I called Trip.com customer service in front of her. After explaining the situation to their representative, I tried to hand the phone to the receptionist so that they could speak directly and resolve the issue. However, she refused and responded in an extremely unprofessional manner, saying, “This is an issue between you and Trip.com. It has nothing to do with us, and you need to resolve it between yourselves.” This complete disregard for customer service was extremely disappointing.
As I had to leave immediately to make it to the hot-air balloons, I could not afford to waste any more time. I therefore had no choice but to make the additional payment demanded by the hotel and leave. In other words, I was forced to pay for a third room that I had never booked or used. Had I not urgently needed to leave the hotel, I would never have made this payment.
At around 9:00 a.m., I received a phone call from the hotel acknowledging that the entire issue had resulted from an error made by the receptionist. They apologized for what had happened and asked for my information so that they could issue a refund. I provided the requested details. Unfortunately, for the following ten days, I received no meaningful update or explanation. The only response to my messages was that they would “remind the accounting department.”
Eventually, I was able to recover the payment that had been wrongfully charged to me on September 3, after it had been taken on August 24. Instead of making a genuine effort to promptly resolve the inconvenience they had caused, I had to spend days following up as though the problem had somehow been my responsibility. I found the hotel’s slow response and unwillingness to resolve the matter promptly completely inconsistent with what I would expect from the Hilton brand.
Although I genuinely liked the hotel itself, this negative experience makes me unlikely to choose Hilton Avanos again. I strongly recommend that Hilton Avanos improve its approach to customer communication, problem resolution, and overall customer satisfaction.
