First off, I thought I was dealing directly with the hotel - that is what they told me - but it turned out that it was hotelplanner.com. They pulled a Bait-And-Switch.
HOTELPLANNER.COM is a RIP-OFF!!! We paid (IN FULL, according to our receipt) nearly $2,200.00 for hotel rooms for 5 nights for our employees in Las Vegas. After traveling for nearly 18 hours they arrived at the hotel (Circus-Circus) only to be told that there would be an additional charge of over $200.00 for a "resort fee" that they had to pay. Keep in mind that they had a receipt that specifically stated that their room charges were "PAID IN FULL". The rate offered by hotelplanner.com, at that point, was no longer competitive; in fact it was more than the rate offered by two other better-known booking sites.
Calling their customer service number, that appeared on our credit card bill, was an exercise in frustration. After six attempts I finally got a person. I explained the situation and the English-as-a-second-language customer service representative said that, "...somewhere on their web site there was a disclaimer stating that there may be additional fees charged by the hotel." I said that I had booked by phone and she said it didn't matter, that it was on their web site, but that it was also on the receipt. I asked her to email me a copy of our receipt (since the receipt was with the travelers already in Vegas). I was told that it would take three to four hours to email it to me even though she was looking at it on her computer so she could go over the information with me.
I asked to speak to her supervisor and was put through to another English-as-a-second-language woman who immediately told me there was nothing she could do. She would not allow me to speak and talked over me when I tried to explain the situation.
I asked for the number of their corporate office and she said that, for security reasons, she was unable to give me that number. She said all she could do was give me the email address to customer service, but she assured me that there was nothing they could do to fix the situation. I asked for her supervisor and she told me that there was no one higher up than her. I asked if she was the president or CEO of the company and she said, again, that for security purposes, the name of that person could not be provided. She told me that if I did not change my tone that she was going to hang up on me. I was not using profanity, but I was being very firm with her. In the end they refused to do anything about the extra fee and we had to pay it.
DO NOT TRUST THIS BOOKING SERVICE! THEY ARE A RIP OFF!!!!! Be extremely careful when booking through the internet and use only the better-known sites like Experian or Kayak. Hotelplanner.com people lie. They will lead you to believe that they are with the hotel, not a brokerage service. Their rates look low, but there are undisclosed, hidden fees that take the prices over the more straight-forward sites. NEVER AGAIN!!!