I am working in a company that owns several types of businesses, and one of these is a budget hotel. My desk is actually located just behind its reception, and so I have an idea on how their transactions go daily. One of the more recent issues in question is the Agoda booking. I have personally booked thru Agoda before, and what I know is that, once a guest arrived at the hotel, it is already paid by Agoda. And thats what we all at the office thought. Our previous staff, Abby, handled sales of the hotel, and whenever my boss asked her if Agoda paid already thru bank, she would always say yes. But when Abby got fired because of her too many questionable financial discrepancies, we realized upon checking that no amount goes into our account from Agoda. All of us were wondering, even my boss. But one thing I noticed. No one seemed to do anything about it.
When I realized that what if, not the account number of the hotel was in the Agoda record, what if it was Abby’s, or some previous staff, or may even be direct to the account of our wicked business partner? We would surely all be dead from deception.
Despite my numerous emails and calls to the only contact detail I found on the Agoda site, I haven’t got anything back. Its so frustrating to think we might have been deceived. So what I did was, I started from the beginning of the hotel’s email, I was thinking at some point there maybe some sort of communication between us and Agoda. Sure enough, I found its first email back in 2010. I immediately called the landline I got hold of, even the account executive was not connected to them anymore. Good thing the one assigned to us was friendly and helpful. I relayed our situation to her and I was surprised of what I found out. Our agreement with Agoda is supposed to be like this, a guest arrives at the hotel with an Agoda voucher. Included at the bottom of the voucher is a UPC number which will be manually entered into our card terminal, thus would be the payment of Agoda. Holy guacamole.
And we have never done this since, forever.
Meaning, we have never received a Single cent from Agoda ever since. Not their fault of course. Its so annoying thinking how could nobody here knew anything about that agreement. Abby was such a friggin liar. Telling us that yeah Agoda payments were in, when in reality she might be trying to say I don’t know and I’m too stupid to care. And she had the nerve to cry her sorry fat ass off when confronted by the Board. I was too irritated because of people’s ignorance and deceit. To think this is not even my hotel yet.
I was somewhat proud of what I have discovered. Total payment would amount to nearly half a million and I’m still working closely with Agoda to finish this backtracking. I would consider this my greatest achievement in the head office yet. Hopefully I could be more, in the future.