Do not use for travel if you need itemised receipts

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Lastminute www.lastminute.com
★★☆☆☆
1.6
17.0% of users recommend this

TaliaHampton308's review of Lastminute www.lastminute.com

“Do not use for travel if you need itemised receipts”

★☆☆☆☆

written by TaliaHampton308 on 27/10/2016

I booked flights and a hotel stay using lastminute.com. A portion was for business and a portion for a holiday. I assumed as I was selecting individual prices per night for accommodation and individual prices per person per flight I would receive a receipt showing this. This is not the case. At no point in the booking/payment process does it warn you that you will only get one big receipt and not to use this process if you require receipts for business purposes. After paying and being unable to find my itemised receipt (and calling their customer service number) I trawled through their website and finally the terms and conditions and there is one paragraph in the terms and conditions that suggests business travellers use a different method of payment. When I asked the customer service representative where on the website it informed customers that no itemised receipts were provided, he said that it did not provide this information. So it seems that lastminute's staff do not even know of the terms and conditions. I feel it is unfair and unhelpful not to state this clearly during the booking process, but I guess that would reduce the range of people booking through lastminute. Now I cannot claim any of the business portion of my travel back because I cannot show my business how much my business flight cost and how much the accommodation cost and separate this out from the portion that was holiday. The accommodation I stayed at was as helpful as possible but said they were restricted from releasing the receipt to me because it was paid by a third party - yep, my money via lastminute, but I can't have the itemised receipt. No amount of begging, pleading or being really nice to lastminute helped. They told me that they are going through restructuring and because they will no longer include GST they cannot provide an itemised receipt. This may be true (I have no idea what jurisdiction lastminute operates under) but if this is the case, they need to be upfront about this during the booking process and not hide it away in one paragraph in their terms and conditions. It is something that significantly affects people.
Just don't use this service - look up prices on it, then call the hotel directly, often the hotel will give you the lastminute advertised price and you know you are only dealing with the hotel no unhelpful middle man. Or go to a travel agent - at least then if something goes wrong there is a person you can speak to face to face and you know in what jurisdiction you can complain to an Ombudsman or some other statutory body. Just avoid these lastminute guys if you value your sanity.

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