JoyReviews of withjoy.com

My son booked a room through the Withjoy website for my nephew's wedding. The dates were auto-populated on the site. He thought he had his dates mixed up and proceeded to complete the booking. As it turns out there were several other people that did the same thing. They booked non-refundable rates to save money. There is no way to contact them other than via email and the email response he finally got back was "sorry...you're out of luck". Furthermore, the hotel told us that the reservation was made through booking.com and can't get a response from them for assistance either. Will not be using either platform EVER AGAIN! They said they were going to reach Out to me directly. Hasn’t happened. 🙄

As a guest, who booked a hotel through their website, I hadn’t realised they were acting as a third party. The website made it look like I was using the hotel I was booking’s website. Which meant I was charged hidden fees from Withjoy + unable to add anything to my booking like breakfast or early check in because their booking service doesn’t allow it but the hotels policy is to add these things on to your booking AFTER you’ve made your reservation. So basically, just had to spend ANOTHER £200 to get the hotel on their own website so I can get the check in I need. Customer service basically told me ‘it’s not our policy and we don’t make alterations once you’ve made your booking’ - then why the hell would ANYONE book through you. I won’t complain to the bride or groom but I’ll make sure I tell everyone else

Customer service & chat is basically nonexistant. We used With Joy for our wedding registry and when there is any small issue with a gift (out of stock/missing/return) and you go to the chat with agent function you will not hear back in an hour, or two, or five, or a day, sometimes not even days. It is absolutely insane and I wish we never used them. I work in the wedding industry and will now tell all of my brides to stay far away and go with a competitor.

Let me frame this from the perspective of a guest attending a wedding. The wedding was held in the Hunter Region, NSW, Australia. The couple used a WithJoy invitation, which included a link to accommodation along with a "booking code" that directed guests to book a specific property. Through the WithJoy service, we paid more than $330 AUD for our accommodation and received confirmation of our booking number. When we arrived, the accommodation confirmed that our booking existed, but advised they had received no payment advice, proof of payment, or any communication regarding payment from WithJoy. This made check-in take far longer than it should have and created unnecessary stress. Thankfully, the staff at the accommodation were incredibly helpful. They reassured us, allowed us to check in anyway, and simply asked us to leave our debit card details as security—which should never have been necessary. They also informed me that the outstanding balance for the room was only $228, which was essentially over $100 less than what we had paid through the WithJoy booking link. I emailed WithJoy immediately before the wedding, with my email being sent at 2:13 PM local time. I received this exact response at 12:24 AM local time: "Hi CJ, Thank you for letting me know that the hotel has not yet received the payment. I’m here to assist you! I will notify our travel partner about this issue. Since your check-in date was yesterday, I hope everything went smoothly with your arrival. Were you able to check in without any problems? I look forward to your reply. Best regards, Izza Joy Travel Concierge" First of all, this response time is completely unacceptable for something as important as accommodation and confirmation of a guest's stay. We were fortunate that the staff at the accommodation were understanding and made sure we weren't left stranded. Other properties may not have been nearly as accommodating. After explaining how unacceptable this experience was, I received two more AI-generated responses along the lines of: "Sorry for the inconvenience, rest assured we do everything we can to help, just awaiting a response from our travel partner..." Why was nobody picking up the phone and resolving this immediately? The responses implied they may have simply sent an email and were waiting, rather than treating an active accommodation issue with any urgency. Three days later—well after we had already checked out—I finally received confirmation that the travel partner had paid the outstanding balance. This raises an obvious question: why are guests paying more than $100 extra for a middleman whose only role is to book another middleman, who then books the accommodation? It is a predatory markup layered on top of multiple unnecessary systems of inefficiency. The process does not guarantee the security of your booking, the payment system clearly isn't reliable, and there is no transparency or receipt confirming that the accommodation has actually been paid. This is a significant flaw in what could otherwise be a good product. However, any booking platform or "service" that operates this way—without transparency and without seamless execution—is something I will avoid entirely in the future based on this experience.

Zero stars if I could. Avoid booking through WithJoy at all costs. I booked a hotel room through WithJoy for a wedding. When I arrived on the day of my stay, the hotel staff was on strike and the property could not accommodate me. I contacted the hotel directly, and they agreed to waive all cancellation fees since I clearly could not stay there through no fault of my own. The problem: because I booked through WithJoy, which they told me is powered by Expedia, the hotel couldn’t process my refund themselves. I had to go through WithJoy’s customer support instead. That’s where things fell apart. I explained the situation clearly, including that the hotel itself had confirmed it would honor a fee-free cancellation. WithJoy’s response was essentially “you’re outside the cancellation window, too bad.” When I pointed out that the hotel was on strike and unable to provide the service I paid for, I was told that wasn’t their problem. They never attempted to contact the hotel to verify my claim, even though doing so would have taken minutes and confirmed everything I said. So now I’m out $300 for a hotel stay I never received, for reasons entirely outside my control, because WithJoy refused to do basic due diligence or show any flexibility. This is not a case of me changing my mind or missing a deadline. The hotel was non-operational. Any reasonable company would have treated this as a legitimate exception. Terrible customer service, rigid to the point of absurdity, and completely unwilling to advocate for a paying customer in a situation that wasn’t remotely my fault. I will not be using WithJoy again, and I’d encourage anyone reading this to book directly with hotels when possible to avoid exactly this kind of runaround.

Disgustingly glitchy and gross UX. The wedding registry page does not allow smooth transfer of cash funds, meaning people have to click out of the website if they want to donate via Zelle or Venmo. Extremely hard to design the page and make edits

This is the most appalling website I have ever had to navigate. I have been round and round in circles. The first thing you have to do is press the payment option and if you select ‘Enter Credit Card details” you go into the greeting card??? When you complete the greeting card via this credit card route you get bombed out. Eventually I tried to do PayPal. All the buttons are ambiguous. Having trawled through ambiguity I get a message telling me to let you know if I ordered something. YOU SHOULD BE TELLING ME if I have ordered something. After half an hour of trying, I couldn’t tell whether I had ordered anything. There is a picture of a basket which is continually empty. I might not be buying a physical gift but by giving money I am still trying to buy something. If there is nothing in the basket, how do I know I created and order??? The instructions for eventually getting to Paypal don’t make any sense at all and if you press on the ‘information’ icon - nothing happens! You should be ashamed of yourselves. Maybe it works for gifts but my experience was ludicrous. It’ll be a miracle if everybody has the perseverance or time to battle their way through this illogical, ambiguous thoroughly user-Unfriendly website. Wake Up.

Very disappointing from a guest perspective. Whole thing is awkward to use - and everything costs money - which you would rather go to the bride & groom. B&G ask for money gifts through the service and you pay them commission. Just share your bank details instead1 NEVER book a hotel room through their service - we stupidly did, and I was very cross with myslef. They showed a price on the screen that was less than booking direct - and when I paid it was significantly higher. When I went back and looked, under the big price was a tiny much higher cost ‘including VAT and our service charge’. I complained about it - a lot - but couldn’t get my money back to book direct. I think it is mid-selling and potentially fraudulent but who has time to fight these things!! Anyway - if attending a wedding arranged through it - do your best to avoid giving them any money as they have very dubious business practices.