Booking.com prepayment

[Bellasmummy]

I've never used booking.com but the hotel I'm after in Austria next year is on there so I'm thinking of using them.

Under the prepayment bit it says the whole amount can be charged anytime from booking. I don't have a problem paying in full now but would like to know when I will be charged, £1600 is a lot of money to suddenly just pop up on the credit card anytime in the next year. Not seen yet if they charge for credit cards, if they do I'll want to use a debit card but also don't want to leave the money sitting in my current account all that time.

Does anyone have any experience booking with them where it shows the prepayment as anytime?

Would I be better just trying to book direct with the hotel? Their website doesn't translate that well into English and I'm not convinced I'm adding on the right options, so I thought it might be better to use booking.com

Any advice would be great, thanks

[Dixie Dot]

I've just used them for the first time, my booking also said prepayment could be taken at any time. I booked in the middle of January and they took payment just over a week ago, which was about 6 weeks before my stay.
Edited to say: I paid by credit card and was charged a foreign transaction fee as the hotel takes payment direct.

[TheGrahams]

When we booked in January, they said we had to pay the sale tax at hotel, when visa came through the hotel had went in and taken all the sales tax and city tax.
It was about £150 extra, think they should advertise to pay all in full instead of we could take money at any time or pay at hotel.
We knew we had to pay sales and city tax anyway but was told we would pay at hotel. It wasn t a big issue, but had to spend ages phoning them to confirm what extra payment was for.

[AL1S0N]

I've booked with them for 1 night in Clearwater, I was under the impression we paid the hotel on arrival?

[HappyGoLucky]

I have booked lots of hotels with them and only had one take payment very early.

I booked a hotel in USA for this August and it said = pay at hotel, but the hotel requested the money a few weeks after booking . So it was taken from my credit card.
Only time its happened though

[fefifoe]

i've booked 2 London hotels with them for July. One has taken payment already and the other hasn't - this was booked mid January and the hotel that has taken payment took it a few days after booking. We booked last year also and that same chain of hotels didn't take payment til we arrived so there seems to be no rhyme or reason to when they take payment.

[DIBBadmin]

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