I just spent over 20 minutes trying to cancel a hotel reservation I made through hotels.com. Why did it take so long? I don't have, and I don't want to have, an account. I made the reservation without signing up. To cancel, I followed the link in the confirmation email -- which got me to a page that wanted me to sign up, or enter my confirmation number. When I did that, I got to a page that told me to sign up or follow the link in my confirmation email.
I tried two different browsers.
I tried their text chatbot -- which wouldn't let me proceed until I signed in.
What eventually worked was tracking down the phone number that got me to a phone bot system that actually let me do it.