I booked a hotel through hotels.com. The trip was rather cursed from the beginning, but the hotel was decent. We checked in, and of course, they placed a hold on our debit card against damages, no problem. We checked out Monday morning. The hotels.com payment cleared, we put the trip behind us (all but the dislocated toe I acquired), and went back to our normal routine.
The shitty service? This morning, we woke up to 3 pending overdraft charges, putting our account in the red even after my SOs paycheck went in (meaning we'll get two more tomorrow morning). What happened? The goddamn hotel never released the hold. Four days is plenty of time to see we didn't damage a damn thing. The bank assured us that this happens all the time, that they just forget to release it. That's lazy and unethical - it's stealing money from their customers, for one thing. What if we'd been rich enough to not notice? Would they have kept our money?
It's particularly frustrating when on Wed, my SO went to the bank (it's his account) and talked to a banker who told him the hold was showing up as $0 to their system so it's not counting against his balance, so he went ahead and paid the bills, which is what gave him the overdraft charges because of course the illegitimate charge went in first, then the bills, then the paycheck, then tomorrow morning the overdraft charges, then a few small purchases we made yesterday, giving us two more overdraft charges, which can't be reversed until they clear. Furthermore, we now have to harass the hotel to give us written confirmation that the charge was illegitimate, and they probably won't put the money back for three business days, according to the banker.
ETA: This is all not to mention the bank, who told us the hold was showing as $0 when we checked it earlier this week (which is why we paid the bills), and who can't reverse the first set of overdrafts until it clears, and who can't prevent the second set from going in overnight tonight either, which means this whole thing won't be cleared up until Monday on the bank's end and probably Wednesday on the hotel's end.