As my wife is disabled, we managed to find suitable holiday Caravan accommodation which provides an electric profile bed and hoist on the disabledholidays website. Not wanting to pay high prices, I did a web search and found the same Caravan on the Trip Advisor Rentals website. Getting holiday accommodation for disabled people is like finding "gold dust", as there aren't that many suitable places and often you've got to book nearly a year in advance, as they get booked up quickly. Well after contacting the accommodation owner, I thought I’d bagged a bargain but how wrong I was. Initially the cost did seem competitive, but obviously with me being so anxious to book I hadn't done my homework on comparison sites. I paid £116 pound deposit and the balance of £800 was due around 8 weeks before the holiday date. The accommodation was not "all inclusive" as we also had to pay for bedding, the making of beds and a shower chair which made the full holiday cost £1013. It was only when I got the owners booking pack after I'd paid the balance, I found that the £116 deposit was actually 14.5% Booking Fee applied by Trip Advisor and the actual rental paid to the owner was £770, because of a 3.75% Processing Fee which again is taken by Trip Advisor. None of this is explained on the Booking Web Page!!Hence the Owners need to make a profit and add extras and inflate the real prices in order to negate the amounts taken by Trip Advisor Rentals. Talk about taking advantage of disabled people, they are true Rip Off merchants!! According to Trip Advisor these fees help them to run a secure platform, provide travelers with 24 hour customer support and gives customers peace of mind that the booking transaction is safe.After I enquired about the payments with Trip Advisor Customer Services, they did give me a breakdown and explained the above, but it's a pity this isn't blatantly displayed on their booking page and is probably hidden away somewhere in their Terms and Conditions. By comparison the caravan is also shown on the ukcaravans4hire website and for similar weeks the rental price was £610 - been well and truly swindled by Trip Advisor as this is not value for money. From this experience, I definitely won't be using Trip Advisor Rentals in the future and I hope people reading this review will boycott this unscrupulous company too. I think it is akin to the Pay Day Loan Sharks where they prey on vulnerable people!
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