Warning: NEVER BOOK HOTELS from Nusatrip!!

So.. here's the story..
Our family is planning to go to Yogyakarta for 4-days holiday from 25-29th December. We've booked our ticket from Garuda Indonesia website directly and no fuss on that.
Then it's time to book the hotel. I browsed all the international hotel website that we've used for many times and found a few hotels that are still available for those dates with reasonable price as well. But because I was quite busy with work, I haven't got time to book the hotel.

A few days later, my dad told my that my sister already booked Grand Aston hotel. Based on my browsing result in the international hotel websites, the price is around $100++.. so I asked my dad why he booked there as we're planning to book a hotel which price around $70 only. But he told me that my sister found this local website and the price in the website is Rp 700k/night. Good news, I thought. And what a rare local website to give that kind of low price......

But turns out... it's the start of our holiday nightmare.....

So, on 22nd Dec, I printed out the hotel voucher that my sister forwarded to my email. In the print out, I saw that one of the terms and conditions is the sentence "Free cancellation before 1 January 1970" and I laughed. But then I stopped laughing when I saw the booked dates are 25-29 JANUARY 2016, instead of 25-29 December 2015.

I immediately called my sister and told her this. She insisted that she punched December when she booked it. So after few yelling here and there, she contact the agent which is Nusatrip to change the dates. Turns out... they can't. They are just a broker. Not a legit agent. So we have to wait for their confirmation on whether it's possible to change date or not.
Oh, and that "Free cancellation before 1 January 1970"? Turns out that means "NO REFUND". What a subtle way to hide the message..... no hidden fees? More like straightforward a fraud!

After waiting hours of no callback from them, my sister called Grand Aston directly and asked about this. Turns out, from Grand Aston itself, they are okay with us cancelling the January booking and change it to December.. but they are full on 25-27th December so we're planning to book 27-29 Dec only, the rate is anyway twice the January rate.. so 4 nights become 2 nights.. eh...

Then we called Nusatrip again, they still insist that they haven't got confirmation. So we did a conference call with the hotel and they heard themselves that the hotel agree with either the cancellation or the date changes. After that, Nusatrip told us that they will call us back after they got confirmation from their agent and hotel.

Another hours spent waiting and still no callback from Nusatrip. We finally called them AGAIN, and they told us that they already sent email to hotel and are just waiting for a confirmation from hotel. Right after that, we called Grand Aston and asked them to check their email. Guess what..... there is NO EMAIL from Nusatrip!

Long story short, the last confirmation we got from Nusatrip is that we can change dates but to 27-31 December 2015 cause the couldn't change 4 nights to 2 nights. And the most idiotic part is that... we need to pay for another 5 millions to get that change because of the rate difference! What the F***!!! We insisted that we only need 2 nights as our flight back is on the 29th Dec anyway, but they keep telling us that it's not possible. I don't know any possible reason for them to reject our request.

Anyway...... this is truly a magnificently bad experience that we had with local travel website. I solely believe that we can't trust local travel website at all right now. They are still lack of experience, with bad and slow service and they don't have the power to change anything in case if there's any issue.

So... moral of the story: NEVER BOOK FROM NUSATRIP. Btw, my sister got directed to this website by triviaGo... so I think it's better as well for you not to get your recommendation from these websites.

Nusatrip SUCKS!!!

P.S: I'm planning to message their CEO: Hans Ebenhanh so at least he got a glimpse of how bad his business is.