Lastminute.com charges £27m for four night hotel stay

In a week that has seen wrongly priced products on the web hitting the headlines, a shocked holidaymaker from London was surprised to see that Lastminute.com had charged him more than £27m for four nights in a hotel when booking a trip to Venice this week.

silicon.com reader Dean Wallace was told that a four night stay in the Universo Nord Hotel would set him back the princely sum of £27,591,999.97. While Venice is notorious for being on the expensive side Dean wasn't keen to shell out such a vast sum, especially as he had been told elsewhere in the booking process that the rooms should only have cost him £75.88 per night.

According to the lastminute.com site, the Universo Nord is a Venetian Palace style first class hotel built in the 17th century, with 65 rooms that have air conditioning, telephone, ice box and a colour television with four language channels.

Which all sounds very nice - but worth £27m? Wallace told silicon.com: "I only wanted to book one room, not to buy the whole hotel."

Lastminute.com told silicon.com: "The error was a one-off system error and has been rectified. Had the customer tried to complete the booking, the error would have been corrected during the booking process."

Asked what he would have done if the error had gone in his favour, Wallace said he "would have contacted customer services and told them" for fear of the booking not being honoured. "The prospect of turning up in Venice with my wife for her 30th birthday, with no hotel booked would not be worth it."

Last year a family of six from Liverpool went on holiday to Florida for just £90 after a website error went in their favour. The family in question kept quiet about the mistake until after they had taken the bargain break, leaving travel agents First Choice little choice but to honour the offer.