Do not book via Booking.com, agoda.com,pricline.com,trivago.com all of tem owned by Pricline Group

I booked a room over the Christmas period on the basis of being able to cancel for free (as per booking.com's advertising). I was hoping to stay 2 nights but wasn't sure if I'd find somewhere at that time of year, so I just booked what was available. When I did find somewhere for 2 nights and cancelled the original booking, I was charged the full amount by the property anyway. Turns out there is something about this in the fine print. This is blatantly misleading and I consider it to be false advertising. Will not be using them again in a hurry.