Payment for the holiday stay was incorrectly debited twice from the account of a Carinthian woman on the online platform. AK intervened and got the money back for the consumer.

A Carinthian woman was amazed when her bank statement showed a double debit after her vacation trip. Twice around 400 euros were debited from the booking platform Booking.com in a short period of time. The woman remembered that when the first booking was made, the payment by card failed because the so-called debit function was not activated. The Carinthian then contacted a service employee of the online travel booking platform by phone to clarify the situation. With the second transfer, she sent the payment confirmation by email and contacted the company again via chat. Just to be safe. That settled the matter for the consumer, at least she thought.

After the surprise of the double debiting, the Carinthian tried again to contact Booking.com - in vain. The consumer then turned to the consumer protection department of the Carinthian Chamber of Labor. "We immediately recognized that the first booking had to be canceled due to the unsuccessful debiting and that the money had to be transferred back to the consumer," said Herwig Höfferer, AK consumer advocate. Although the consumer tried many times to clear up the double booking with the online platform, Booking.com only reacted after the AK experts intervened. The company's declaration for the double booking was described as an unexpected system error. "AK Kärnten's consumer protection is committed to all Carinthians," says AK President Günther Goach.