An MBH.com reader sent an interesting message that may affect you if you buy things online.
Apparently, the reader reserved, and purchased, a hotel room stay online for an event, and later had to cancel. During the original payment process there was apparently a pop-up window that informed the purchaser that there were no refunds. The reader did not see this popup window, apparently because the browser had a pop-up blocker installed.
When the reader called up the hotel to cancel his stay and get a refund, he found out about the terms and conditions of his purchase, and was denied a refund.
Since the reader did not say whether he bought the ticket directly from the hotel's website or through an aggregator like Priceline.com, I won't mention the particular hotel.
This is unfortunate. I was sorry to hear that the reader lost $143. Otherwise, it boils down to whether the terms and conditions were clearly conveyed to the purchaser. No doubt the hotel thought they were, and no doubt the reader thought they were not. If I wanted to make sure that my potential customers read something, seeing what happened here I wouldn't put it in a pop-up window because there's no guarantee that the purchaser will see it. But is there a broader requirement of websites for making such terms and conditions unmistably evident to the purchaser? I don't know, but I doubt it.
Given that this occurred and can happen again, how can you not be trapped by it? One easy way is to disable your pop-up blocker when you are going to purchase something online. Another way is to temporarily allow pop-ups should they come up. On recent versions of the common browsers you'll get a message bar above the main window that says a pop-up was blocked. After seeing what happened to this reader, I'd check what was in those pop-ups. It could be junk, but it also could be some important information. You just don't know until you see it. Yet another way is to go and find the terms and conditions on the website. Somewhere in the purchase process they may say that “Your purchase is bound by our terms and conditions” with a hyperlink to the T&C.
One last suggestion with regard to reservations: It's been my experience that there are restricted or no refunds on hotel, car, or air reservations if you pay at the time of reservation. Priceline charges your card immediately if your bid is accepted, and there ain't no turning back. (Priceline also makes this very clear.) If they only put a hold on the card, then you can cancel with a few days' notice usually. So that's another clue as to the refund policy, even if you don't see said policy.
Most companies will force you to click on a box that you have read the terms and conditions of the agreement. I think the bigger problem is that the agreements are so long and no one bothers to clearly read them (myself included).
It's great to see that a hotel chain is willing to lose a customer for $143.
If I was running it, I'd at least just give them a voucher for $143.