They charged you twice for sleeping once.

The commonest double charge is not a bank error but two different merchants each convinced they are the one you owe, and the statement settles it in under a minute.

Read this first

Two lines on a statement are not always two charges

Before you accuse anyone, read the statement properly. A pending authorisation sitting next to a completed charge is normal and resolves itself: the hold falls away within a window your issuer can tell you. Two POSTED transactions are the real thing, and they do not fix themselves. The other pattern worth knowing is the prepaid booking charged again at the desk — you paid a booking platform months ago, and at checkout the property, seeing no payment in its own system, charges the card in the folder. That is two merchants, two descriptors, and a claim against the property. Note the descriptor, date and amount of each line, then call your issuer and ask for the dispute deadline on the second one. Every other date in the campaign is built inside that one.

What you are owed

The duplicate back, in full

You bought one stay and owe one payment. Whichever party took the second one is holding money it has no contract for, and that is the simplest kind of claim there is. The work is not persuading anyone of the principle; it is identifying which of two merchants took the extra payment, and your card statement does that for you.

A precise answer, not a shrug

Ask whoever you paid to confirm in writing how many transactions they processed against your booking, on what dates and for what amounts. A property that only charged once can say so in a sentence, and that sentence is your case against the other party. A property that charged twice has just been asked to look at the evidence of it.

The dispute route if they stall

A duplicate charge is one of the cleanest card dispute grounds there is: two transactions, one contract, and no argument about quality or description. If you paid by card, tell both parties in writing the date you will file, then file on that date. If you paid by bank transfer there is no dispute route, which is precisely why the written admission above is worth collecting first.

How they will refuse, and what answers it

“It is a pre-authorisation and will drop off automatically.”

Sometimes true, and easy to verify: ask them to confirm in writing that the second item is an authorisation hold and not a completed charge, with the date it releases. If it is genuinely a hold, your issuer will say the same and you can stand down. If it has posted, their own sentence is now evidence that they misdescribed a charge as a hold.

“The other charge is from the booking site, not from us.”

Possibly, which is why both of them go on the same thread with the same deadline rather than being visited in turn. Attach the statement showing both descriptors and ask each party to confirm what it took and when. One of them is holding a payment with no stay attached, and neither gets to nominate the other in writing without that becoming your evidence.

“Our system shows only one charge.”

Then ask them to put that in writing, with the amount and date of the one charge they processed. That statement does not end the matter — it aims it. It is exactly what your issuer and the other merchant need to see, and a property that would never volunteer help will happily produce a sentence that points the finger somewhere else.

Gather this before you write

Your card statement showing both transactions, with the date, amount and merchant descriptor of each, and whether each is pending or posted
The booking confirmation, showing the total agreed and whether the stay was prepaid
The final folio from the property, showing what the property believes you paid it
Written confirmation from each party of what it charged and when
Every message about the duplicate, in both directions, with timestamps
Your issuer's dispute deadline for the second transaction and the date the clock runs from

Now make them answer.

Tell us what happened in your own words. We write the letters, set the deadlines, and email each escalation on the day it is due.