Recently I wrote about cancelling non-refundable hotel bookings. Something that’s very ‘your mileage may vary’ that I first wrote about 15 years ago is calling and upgrading your rate to a more expensive cancellable one, and then cancelling. Hilton has long had a small fee to change non-refundable bookings.
Sometimes non-refundable means non-refundable. And other times you literally just make a mistake. Maybe you clicked confirm by accident when you were just pricing the reservation, or maybe you booked the wrong date. Then this mistake that you realize instantly can turn into a pain, even though it’s usually correctable.
This week’s Frequent Miler podcast has Nick describing his ordeal fixing a mistake he made when he booked a non-refundable reservation through the Bilt Rewards portal. Whenever you’re dealing with a third party booking, there’s more people or machines talking to each other in a game of telephone with two cups and a string.
Nick: This is the story of my experience booking a hotel through Bilt. I somehow accidentally booked a nonrefundable hotel room while I was trying to check the price. I never entered a credit card; it charged a card connected to my Bilt account through Bilt Dining.
I don’t know exactly how that happened, and I’m not placing 100% of the blame on Bilt. It was a strange situation. But I received an email confirming a nonrefundable booking that wasn’t cheap, so I immediately contacted Bilt.
I told them, “I did not click any book button. I know I didn’t. This isn’t my first rodeo.”
After first putting me through a frustrating AI bot, Bilt said it would contact its hotel partner. I was told I would hear back within three days if the hotel agreed to cancel the reservation without a fee.
He didn’t hear back from Bilt, he needed a room at the hotel anyway he just didn’t want this booking (which was third party, not direct as some Bilt reservations are), so he decided to keep it. But then when his plans changed and he couldn’t actually use it, he called the hotel and they told him it was already cancelled and refunded when he first made the request! It just still showed active at Bilt. He’d even gotten his money back months earlier but didn’t realize it.
I received the refund, so I’m grateful that Bilt contacted the hotel and got it handled. I had only been half-confident that they would do anything after I said I hadn’t intended to make the booking.
But it’s wild that Bilt never told me the outcome—and that, months after the hotel canceled the reservation, it still appears as active in my Bilt app.
The thing to understand here is that this required the hotel to cancel, it required information flow back to Expedia which would have processed the booking and then from Expedia back to Bilt and it appears the breakdown happened there. So you need to follow up on these things, at least with your own credit card statements to see that the money gets returned (that was the important part here, and it happened).
I recently had a similar situation. I like using Rove Miles not just for points transfers but for hotel bookings because:
- They usually give you 1.5 cents per point
- And you can do this with their ‘direct booking’ reservations
- That means it’s money to spend on hotel stays that still earn hotel points, loyalty status credit, and receive elite benefits
However I booked a hotel for the wrong night. I was off by one night. I realize it as soon as I hit confirm. It was 100% my fault. It was a prepaid room but it was book direct. I opened a chat window, told them what happened, and they confirmed that as long as the hotel was willing to cancel they’d refund my points. I rang up the hotel, got them to agree and even email this to me. I shared that back to Rove in the chat and they even credited the points to me instantly while I was in the chat.
Generally airline tickets can be cancelled within 24 hours of purchase. There’s no requirement of this for prepaid, non-cancellable hotel bookings. Consumer protections against airlines are often signficiantly greater. Airlines have their own federal regulator.
The federal rule is that customers can cancel tickets within 24 hours of purchase as long as they booked at least 7 days prior to travel. American enforces a 2-day rule. Delta does not enforce an advance purcahse requirement at all. Southwest publishes an advance purchase requirement but doesn’t enforce it.
Many hotel booking sites used to publish similar 24 hour cancel rules. Those were nerfed long ago.
However there are still formally some:
- Airbnb allows 24 hour free cancels for stays under 28 nights, though hotels also list on their platform and those are generally exempt.
- Booking.com but this varies by property
- California hotels and short-term rentals: by law have to honor cancellation within 24 hours after confirmation if booked at least 72 hours prior to check-in.
Here’s the Booking.com guidance on California hotel cancels.
There’ve been some reports recently of the BILT travel portal proceeding with bookings just while you review the details (like, thinking you are just browsing, but, nope, they confirmed already.) Hope they can sort that out, because for non-refundable accidental bookings, that’s no bueno. Also, still “Coming Soon” for Blade and Blacklane BILT Cash redemptions. That’s some B$!
This happens with rental cars booked through Autoslash and Priceline. Sometimes they still show up as active bookings even when they are canceled and/or refunded.
Back in February I booked on rove and tried to cancel. They wouldn’t let me cancel. Ended up disputing with credit card and then rove blacklisted me.
Re Nick… hope he gets an admin or some software that better organizes his life and flags important refunds. Because being disorganized will eventually catch up to you.
Re your post… it’s not current re California:
The answer changed on July 1, 2026.
* Before July 1, 2026: It applied only to reservations for hotels and short-term rentals located in California. If you booked a Nevada hotel, the statute did not apply.
* On and after July 1, 2026: The statute now applies to:
1. Reservations for hotels/STRs located in California, or
2. Reservations made in California for hotels/STRs advertised in California.
So the answer is no longer simply “hotels in California.”
Two recent experiences here in Europe, both with Hilton properties:
-two reservations non refundable for the same dates , 3 nights stay. in two different hotels in Vienna: one of them re-booked my stay for the following month with no special issue ( as I was planning anyway different trips to Vienna)
-in Frankfurt, due to my Diamond status, the reservation was cancelled but… I have insisted for a re-booking instead of a refund as I considered they were very gracious!
@Gary:. The problem in most cases seems to be Expedia, which is the “back-end” of many credit card and discount (e.g. “Tickets at Work”) travel booking sites. Usually, dealing with Expedia is akin to a root canal without anesthetic.
Case in point:. I ended up with two non-cancellable reservations at the Holiday Inn Express at Colorado Springs Airport. One I looked at through a third party site, and the other through IHG. The hotel was able to cancel the direct booked reservation, but told me it couldn’t do anything with anything booked through Expedia. Fortunately I wanted one, and used the Expedia reservation, and the hotel credited me the points.
Case in point #2:. Booked the Park Lane Hotel in NYC through a third party website whose back end was Expedia. We were told the Park Lane had no record of our reservation and were “walked” after one night of a five night stay. There was no effort by the third party site to find us anything, and all responses from the third party were “We’ll have to contact our partner (identity not disclosed but we know through other means it was Expedia). After a year of “We need to contact our partners, it became clear that Expedia simply doesn’t want to deal with much.
I booked a non-refundable stay for the wrong night on a road trip. When I realized my mistake, I made a new booking for the same property for the correct date. It was well under $100, so I just ate it. I’ll pay that to avoid the hassle and, particularly, to avoid talking to someone on the phone (particularly the folks in customer service).
I have no credit cards stored with airlines, hotels, or third-party booking sites. It’s sometimes annoying to enter the card data each time (though GooglePay will often do it for me—and, often, with a virtual version of the card). But, I then have less fear of a data breach (maybe unfounded) and, importantly, I can’t “accidentally” make a purchase.
I did it with IHG and immediately realized my mistake. Seems like there should be at least a 1 hour grace period on accidental bookings. I have no patience for people who book non-refundable then expect credits when they cancel much later. But immediately doesn’t make sense as it didn’t hurt anyone’s ability to book to someone else.
Because I ended up with overlapping bookings, they sent it to the hotel to sort out and they cancelled the overlaps.
Recently, Marriott app has been putting in dates, instead of refundable or not refundable.
(1) It you are in a hurry, you might not notice that the date is at midnight that same night, or in the past.
(2) I almost booked the EWR Newark Marriott with a non-refundable date for that reason.
(3) In a recent trip to Switzerland, I booked a Marriott hotel with no cancel date two weeks before my stay. I thought I had until a couple of days before the trip, I went in to change hotels, but it was too late. Moreover, my credit card was charged for the full stay at least a week before my stay started.
My point is, everyone double check the due date. If you make a small change, like changing from one person to two people, double-triple check that the due date has not changed.
I imagine this is kind of like what American does when looking at a flight all the way up to the purchase page while logged into your AAdvantage account It’ll actually create a record locator for your reservation under the right circumstances but never confirm the booking. Except BILT is accidentally confirming the background reservation. Whoops.
Last year I booked thru CitiTravel for Thanksgiving down in La Jolla, CA. I called the hotel directly to link it to a separate booking made thru the Hilton website. The hotel gave me that reservation# & told me Expedia was listed as the 3rd party (so CitiTravel uses Expedia?). About a week before Thanksgiving, I happened to be looking at my bookings on the Hilton site and saw that the Expedia booking was cancelled!! I called the hotel & they said Expedia had cancelled the reservation. I called CitiTravel and they claimed my reservation was still fine – I said no, the hotel said it was cancelled. CitiTravel then offered to cancel my reservation without a fee – but I WANTED that booking which was in a week! CitiTravel then said they had to ask their booking partner what happened, and try to get the reservation back. Luckily Expedia was able to pick up the reservation they cancelled, but it was a new reservation #. No apologies, no explanations, nothing. I would have been screwed if I hadn’t noticed the CitiTravel/Expedia booking was cancelled – from the Hilton site no less! The CitiTravel site still showed my reservation as intact (when it was cancelled!)
@This comes to mind — You’re often bragging about business class to Europe and Australia, yet you stay at places “well under $100” a night? Right…