This is scam right - Booking.com?

[cakeorwine]

Going on holiday soon. Suddenly got a message via Booking.com from the apartment saying payment declined, use the link below to pay or else the booking will be cancellled .Please pay in 2 hours.

It doesn't look over easy to report this to Booking.com

I think it's a hack via the owner's email?

I have updated my card details on Booking.com but not pressed the link

I will message the apartment and see their response.

It's a known scam linked to this site. I almost fell for it earlier this year.

Yes, I got one of these. I did inform Booking.com, so that they know phishing emails are being sent in their name.

Apparently

"You will be charged a prepayment of the total price at any time."

Which is not very clear

I have updated my card details on Booking,com, checked my balance and messaged the apartment.

Definitely a scam. You may want to cancel your card as well as they can track the details that you have entered even though you didn't press send.
I am pretty good about spotting scams, but have almost been caught out a couple of times through booking.com.

I updated it on the Booking.com website. Not via any other link. I didn't even press any other link.

Yes that’s odd. I’ve used booking quite a lot and it shows a last date for free cancellation / payment date.

Don't you pay through a portal with Booking anyway?

Scam alerts:

Unexpected notification that your payment has been cancelled/declined, and you have no reason to think that there might be a legitimate problem with your card.

Telling you that you must pay in a different way to normal, link conveniently provided.

Giving you a very short time limit in which to do so, or else.

Not necessarily. I have collected directly from my BDC guests.

Not every owner advertising there uses their payment services, although most do.

I always confirm direct to my guests that they have paid in full and I have collected the money so they shouldn’t fall for this type of scam.

How do you get the payment details (card details) and what detail do you get?

Ring Booking.com
They are wonderful at sorting things out like this.

Contact your bank directly and ask them. If an attempt has been made to take the payment and it has been declined, the bank will be able to tell you.

Looks like a scam to me. Good idea to contact the provider directly before paying anything.

UPDATE:

Well - it turns out according to the bank that an attempt was made to charge my account but it was declined because they failed to give enough security information to the bank.

What you don't do is send links to the client to click on

From the bank chat:

": Please contact the retailer and ask them to send as part of the payment request the CVV and/or post code."

Well done for getting to the bottom of it.

pretty idiotic of the retailer to try and resolve it that way when it had so many scam hallmarks.

There is some feedback to the retailer that they might like to take on board!

Do they mean that booking.com tried to charge your card themselves, on behalf of the place you're staying, or is it possible that the place you are staying have had their account hacked and the hackers are trying to charge as many people as they can this afternoon while they still have access, and have changed the bank details to their own, and the cc company got suspicious? There is no way that email was written by a member of staff at booking.com, surely?

(edited for clarity)

It's the second - the apartments tried to charge it but failed security

Just like a private messaging system on here - someone just hacks your account and pretends to be you.

It seems that it might be a genuine message though. Just very badly written

Yes, it’s odd that the ‘retailer’ didn’t provide the cvv/postcode in the first place, so could still be a scammer.

So everyone on this thread was wrong, it wasn't a scam. The digital eagles are all flying in the wrong direction.

Better to be safe than sorry.

If you were to ask ChatGPT to pretend to be a scam, this is what it would produce

Urgency
Link
Poor English

There is a "Contact Customer Service" link on Booking dot com's website - right at the very bottom of the page.

I'll pop the link below but feel free not to click on it and go via their website!!

Booking.com Help Centre

I also think it's a scam as I've had a card rejected before but it was rejected at the time of booking/entering the card details, not days later.

So does that mean you were being scammed OP? The email can’t be genuine from what the bank have said. Have you managed to get through to booking.com? Well spotted btw

I honestly don't know.

It is either:

1. The owners had the card details (or some of them) and tried to take payment. It failed because they didn't have all the details so instead they sent a link through, saying it had to be done in 2 hours and they spoke poor English. Evidence for this is that the card was declined for the correct amount and payment was attempted by a retailer bearing the apartment name'

2. The owner has been hacked and messages intercepted. They then send a link saying payment declined, please click on the link, in broken English.