Yesterday I was trying to make a hotel reservation using amoma.com, as they have very good prices(too good to be true?), but I literally spent hours continuously trying to make a reservation, and they just weren't able to process the payment as they couldn't bill any of the various debit or credit cards I used. I tried with different and same cards, over and over and over, and not even Paypal was able to process the payment using my cards, and that has never ever happened before! I inserted all the details, of a debit Master Card, and the site insisted it was not a debit card but a credit card, so I had to change the option to credit card and pay an extra fee, but not even then I was able to complete the reservation. I tried this many many times, I got tired, frustrated, but not long after I finally gave up, I received an email with an order confirmation, just the number of the order, and saying they tried to contact me by phone, but as they couldn't reach me(this was during the night so my phone was off), they sent me that email asking me to contact them by email or phone. I replied saying that I would highly prefer to be contacted by email, said that even though they had two phone numbers, one was mine and the other was my girlfriend's, and as she doesn't speak English as well as I do, I said that if they had to contact by phone, to call me, not my girlfriend. So guess who they called? My girlfriend, of course!! And this where it changes from a awful customer experience, to start looking like something fishy. From what my girlfriend understood, and I think she understood everything quite well, a woman called her from Amoma, saying that they usually had problems with cards from my country(I live in western Europe, not a 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] World country), and so, the woman suggested that the reservation could be done by bank transfer. The bank transfer would have to be made within 24 hours for securing that price. After that she sent us an email with all the details for doing the bank transfer, but that's when things get even fishier, because the name in the bank account was Travel Payment Solution, and not Amoma. You may say that that's the name of the company that owns the site, but no, that's not the case. The company that owns the site and to which a SSL certificate was issued by Thawte, is TripOnline SA.
I tried to contact the hotel by email, but they haven't replied yet, so I called them, but the lady that answered it was very nice, but not that helpful, because she said that she couldn't check the reservations, she didn't even know if the hotel worked with Amoma, or Travel Payment Solution, or TripOnline, but she told me to call again tomorrow morning, so that I can talk directly with the reservations department.
I go0gled Amoma.com, and, as usual, the opinions differ, a lot! Some people say that it's a scam and they had lots of problems, while others say that they couldn't be happier, that their customer experience was wonderful.
What do you think? Is this a scam or just a very unprofessional way of doing business?
Did you have any good or bad experience booking a hotel with Amoma.com?
I'm thinking about sending an email to Amoma, asking them to explain to me in detail, why the hell should I transfer money to an account held by Travel Payment Solution.
I tried to contact the hotel by email, but they haven't replied yet, so I called them, but the lady that answered it was very nice, but not that helpful, because she said that she couldn't check the reservations, she didn't even know if the hotel worked with Amoma, or Travel Payment Solution, or TripOnline, but she told me to call again tomorrow morning, so that I can talk directly with the reservations department.
I go0gled Amoma.com, and, as usual, the opinions differ, a lot! Some people say that it's a scam and they had lots of problems, while others say that they couldn't be happier, that their customer experience was wonderful.
What do you think? Is this a scam or just a very unprofessional way of doing business?
Did you have any good or bad experience booking a hotel with Amoma.com?
I'm thinking about sending an email to Amoma, asking them to explain to me in detail, why the hell should I transfer money to an account held by Travel Payment Solution.
