We booked through hotels.com. We had correspondence with the property via email as well as through hotels.com to organise a car park, check in times, etc.
hotels.com “guaranteed” our booking. After a 2 hour drive with a 7 week old baby, on arrival they had no record of the booking, said because i booked through a third party website it was never going to be a guaranteed booking, they had no availability and couldn’t do anything.
When shown the email sent from their hotel reception address, which they confirmed was definitely their email address, they said hotels.com must have sent it because they didn’t. They blamed it on a scam and said the phone call didn’t come from them, even with being their phone number listed on their business cards. Either a very clever scam with access to the properties email address and phone number and therefor not secure, or made a mistake and had no intention of admitting it.