Hotel de la Gare

We arrived around midnight after 10 hours on the road, having crossed almost all of France, and found the hotel door locked with nobody there. The phone only got an answer 20 minutes later, when someone finally spoke to us in French. They said we had arrived one minute after 11 and couldn't get in or stay. We had already paid 44.71 euros, and 10 days later neither the hotel nor Booking.com had refunded us. Booking.com also gets a share of the money they kept. We were left not knowing where to sleep. After an hour, by luck, we found a real hotel in a nearby city and paid three times more for a bed that night. We hadn't checked this place's reviews while travelling to Aix-les Bains. Looking back, the reviews about the inside of the building were terrible too. The photos were misleading and made it look like a nicer hotel. We never even got inside. It looked like a locked prison from outside. Thank God we didn't end up staying there, given what previous guests had written. This fake hotel has left a couple who came to Aix-les Bains with the best feelings about it never wanting to return to the town. It's not just about losing our money. The ethical treatment we faced in the middle of the night, and being treated like nobodies, was deeply upsetting. We've travelled all over Europe and elsewhere and never been in this situation. We should get our money back and compensation too. A place like ...de la Gare would be better off closed by the city council, though we think they wouldn't care.