Is Booking.com too scammy to trust now?

[Icanseeasquirrel]

Or have I just been unlucky? Sorry this is long. I’ve been using Booking.com for years without issues. Have used Airbnb a couple of times but I’m not a fan of them because of all the accommodation they have removed from the rental market and all the bad reviews about scams . I have excellent reviews on both sites and leave good reviews.

I have tended to book hotels on Booking.com and it’s always been fine but for an upcoming wedding needed a few rooms for a two night stay for a family wedding group so looked at whole houses.
It’s a Northern town three hours away with around six big hotels.

Attempt 1. Booked a house with booking.com. Months ago. Payment to be made a week before stay. The wedding is this weekend. Ten days ago I get a message. ‘We have been trying to reach you. The property is not available. Please cancel on the site’
Why don’t they cancel it? Anyway I cancelled it. Immediately tried to find another house and of course that one came up as available. I messaged them and they said thanks for letting us know. It’s still listed! (Same price).

Attempt 2. I found a smaller worse option. Booked. Confirmed. Sent a message querying something. They came back ‘We are not available on those dates. Booking cancelled’. Brilliant.

All the twin rooms in all the hotels are gone now. I book an expensive house on Airbnb. Immediately cancelled. ‘Sorry this listing should not show as available on those dates’.

Attempt 3. I book another option. Booking.com again. The last place in town with enough beds for us all. It’s a new listing with no reviews. Less than a week now so paid up front. Yesterday I got a message from Booking.com portal. ‘We need your email address to take the deposit as we are unable to do this on the site’. Gave my email on the site then googled this as a possible scam and yes it is a scam. Appears that the site chat is very easily hacked so messages appear to be from the hosts but aren’t. Does the accommodation even exist?!

The message said entry was via pin pad and would only be released when deposit is paid. So I try to contact the accommodation to query the scam. Don’t trust the messaging system so use the phone number. Recorded message saying to contact them via WhatsApp. It’s some agency in a different Northern town.

Booking.com ‘customer service’ is a chatbot. Completely unhelpful.

So I am not confident that after a long drive we will arrive to have anywhere to stay. I spent last night googling these issues and it’s massive. So many people scammed and unable to do anything via Booking.com to get their money back. People stranded. Fake listing. Constant hacks. Has it been enshittified so much it’s no longer usable? Maybe for hotels that have some security and oversight but not for private listings.

Anyone had this portal messaging scam but still found their accommodation exists? I guess that if we can’t get in we will have to try and contact people out of hours and gather some evidence to try and get a refund but all my searches tell me booking.com are impossible to deal with and I have no chance.

Even if nobody on here can help I wanted to send a warning. Honestly don’t use these sites if you can avoid them. I will be booking direct from now on.

I'm sorry that you've experienced so many bad situations from that site!

Thanks for the heads up. I book business trips there, at least twice a month, so will keep an eye out for any crazy stuff.

I like to book direct, so some of the boutique B&Bs and hotels earn the entire profit, but I have never had any issues like the ones you have encountered (yet) when booking through booking.com

I'm just back from a break booked with them. All went well. I did, however, know the hotel and that it's well run. I don't think I'd trust it, or any other aggregator like Airbnb, with a new property or one with strange reviews.

We can, of course, get ripped off by any business and I think the sheer size of these sites means there will be many listings from shysters.

I'm very sorry you're having so much trouble.

Thanks. I’m so careful online that I’m really annoyed to have been affected. This is the crossest I’ve been since trying to get out of a Virgin Media subscription (shudder).

I avoid them as too many people having issues.

I think it’s still fine for big hotels. Although the search function is a nightmare- seems impossible to filter out to just hotels.

Im not sure I’d trust for a house rental. Most recently I searched the platform and booked the actual house with a reliable local recital company.

I've noticed a few fake listings. Different addresses, but the same photos. I couldn't find anywhere to report them though.
I guess I'm lucky - I've used them for years, with only one slight hiccup.
Good luck with it all

They have been having issues with their chat function being hacked for years . If you contact them they deny all knowledge, but Google will confirm ongoing issues. It happened to us a couple of times and I honestly don't know how they are allowed to carry on with such poor security .

I’m on a trip now, all fine with booking.com, I think you have been unlucky but there’s definitely more issues with rentals over hotels. All of these sites are only facilitators for the owners, consequently you get good and bad owners. The place I’m in now is lovely, only booked it Wednesday evening for Thursday and no problems at all, whereas the place I was looking at for tonight on booking.com i googled (I always do before booking) isn’t as described, the pool is out of action and the place is being used for a huge school prom, think drunk youngsters (rural area forget all stay over) in the corridors! The hotelier hadn’t but either on booking.com of course (and we were only looking at it for the pool!) anyway near miss and booked elsewhere for £30 less! As annoying as it would have been i couldn’t have blamed booking.com because how could they know, it’s the owner at fault, though when I’ve had an issue there is a number you can call and they did sort it out getting me 25% refund

I booked all over Japan recently without an issue .

I have used booking.com hundreds of times and never had an issue.

Do you check the reviews? I only book rental accommodation (apartments etc) if there are a lot of reviews.

I use booking.com a lot but had my first issue for an upcoming holiday - all booked and paid in advance when I got a WhatsApp message with a link to the property (all photos etc accurate) saying I needed to confirm the booking within 24hrs and to pay deposit. I messaged on the site to the accommodation and they immediately responded saying it was a scam and to ignore. I blocked my credit card in case they had those details somehow as no idea how they got all my booking details plus phone number.

I’m in the middle of a mess with them. I’ve got a ‘confirmed’ booking for next week but the accommodation have not at any point communicated with me. Arrival time is not confirmed. All booking.com will say is that if we can’t get access when we arrive, they will then find us somewhere to stay. The place in no longer on the website. I’ll never book with them again.

I have used booking.com for our current trip without incident. As I have used it a few times I get additional discounts which often makes it cheaper than booking directly. I know I probably should book direct but I have elderly ailing DPs, so it’s good to have everything in one place if staying in more than one town with cancellation options transparent if that is necessary ( thankfully not on this trip).

I wouldn’t use it to book a large property only hotels or apartments and I check the reviews for issues before booking. For larger properties for extended family holidays we would tend to use local established agencies, although cancellation terms are usually a lot stricter.

I have had one scam attempt to try and get me to pay off site, thankfully spotted it before putting in details. Also one genuine deposit request offsite, queried it and it was genuine and a hotel I had stayed in before, but my main annoyance is increasingly when you book the owners/property managers direct you to their site to put in lots of check in information, or contact you on whatsapp with information which defeats my desire to keep everything in one place.

I’ve booked 3 seperate trips to Nigeria through booking.com and never had issue always paid on arrival aswell.

I would use google maps for your type of booking. Booking.com I only use for hotels.

I have only had one bad experience, but I only use booking.com as a search engine now, and then find the property details online to book direct.

My guess would be that first hotel is the one being scammy. They’ve probably resold your room at a higher rate, but I don’t think they can cancel agency bookings. Hence they got you to.

I booked multiple hotels on booking.com including multiple for a holiday in southeast asia and didn't have any issues. I've never had an issue and they're almost always cheapest. That's not to downplay your own experience. I'm quite careful to read the reviews on multiple platforms before booking

I think you've just been very unlucky @Icanseeasquirrel

I've used the site for years with no issues at all.

Edited to add - I do mainly use it for hotels.

I’ve never had an issue with Booking.com but only use it for decent size hotels, make use of the free cancellation and call ahead of the payment date to check the hotel has the booking and then call again to check they have the payment and it is all confirmed. So this 2 call hassle is annoying but for me it’s the price of the free cancellation.
No experience of booking private listings - I’ve heard too many bad stories (though tbh I would say the same of Airbnb).

I always book free cancellation too but without the phone calls.

Again, never had a problem with booking hotels this way.

They do have a problem with security. I used them for a trip earlier this year and got a scammy whatsapp message asking for payment for one of the nights. I took a screenshot and sent it to booking.com and got no reply. It has put me off using them again.

Yep we got caught by this. Our friend booked for our two families (10 people) and when we arrived (overseas trip), the accommodation didn’t exist. He’d paid upfront (a lot of money). Having said that he ignored all the red flags and took communication offline, paid into a separate bank account etc. the amounts he’d paid to booking.com (twice then was told to cancel by the scammer and pay direct) were refunded. But he was still hugely out of pocket. Good luck OP.

I have used them hundreds of times, most recently a two weeks trip to California with no issues . Maybe I’ve been lucky.

I was a super host on airbnb for years and thought I would try booking.com.
It was a total disaster they kept opening up my blocked off dates, selling one night stays when my minimum booking was set to 3 nights and selling for random low prices.
The support facility was less than useless too.
I honoured the bookings and cancelled my listing but even then it took months to be removed properly.
Nightmare company.