CHARM HILL SAPA HOTEL

We booked this place on Trip and paid for a reservation for one night with two breakfasts. We travelled 7 hours from Hanoi by bus to get to it. When we arrived in the afternoon they sat us down and informed us that unfortunately they had no room available for us (despite our reservation!|) and would we like a refund!!! It was the Tet holiday and the chances of finding a similar room in Sapa were slim, so after pressing them they offered to find us another room in another hotel. We were dropped-off (dumped) at a 2 star hotel of inferior quality to our original booking and no breakfast available. And no refund/compensation offered. After reporting this to Trip they offered us a partial refund but indicated that, as we had accepted the arrangement offered by the original hotel, we could not be upgraded or simply offered something of equivalent value to the reservation we originally made. This is the first time this has happened to me. This hotel was either utterly amateur/inept or just plain unethical. Be warned though, should you run into the same complication at any hotel you arrive at DO NOT accept the hotel's solution to the problem without first reporting it to the Trip platform to see what they can do.