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 confused that you won’t use Airbnb due to removing rental properties from the market, however will stay in those very same houses so long as they’ve been booked with a different platform… you do realise you’re still making use of a house that’s been removed from the rental market!?

I’ve used it a few times over the years to book apartments rather than hotels with no issue until this year when we turned up and ‘the property was no longer available’

They were absolutely dreadful in how they dealt with it, ill never use them again

Never book new properties, always go with reviews regardless of where you book. This is one of the biggest indicators of a scam.

I book with a variety including booking .com, Airbnb, hotels .com (if using Tesco vouchers), local tourist boards etc. Any that offer apartments are taking accommodation from local housing needs, not just Airbnb but yes their accommodation predominantly is. Florence is a positive example where the local council took charge and banned it within a certain radius of the centre - I truly believe this is the only way to fix the issue

I use them for hotels but always check with the hotel itself and book where I can get a good price and free cancellation if I fear a trip may not happen.
Lots of hotels now offer that as well and I go away from booking.com more and more.

For business trips we are encouraged to book directly, if we go to our HQ then several hotels nearby have special deals with them we need to book anyway.

For self catering - I used them but I knew the property already and had the owner's contact details but they used the site for ease of administration.
I prefer Vrbo.

Someone I know recently came off a 10 hour flight to find that the villa they had booked didn't exist. Bad enough, but then booking.com claimed it had nothing to do with them, despite all being through their platform, and wouldn't help or refund. Last I heard this is an ongoing battle.

The only issue I have had was wth a hotel, where I paid through booking.com but then the hotel insisted I hadn't and took payment again. I eventually got it sorted.

I would probably still book a hotel through them but I'd definitely think twice about other accommodation.

i booked a hotel in Manchester via booking.com. A few days before I received WhatsApp message from a “concierge” who had my name, dates of stay, and all other details. Luckily, my phone flagged that it was a scam. I googled it and saw that this is a well known issue. Neither booking.com or the hotel cared or wanted to investigate the fact that all my private data had been leaked somehow. I reported it to the ICO who eventually sent me an email back saying they would not be investigating further! It’s astonishing. I have no idea if the scammers got more info like my address, payment information etc, as nobody will tell me. I wouldn’t use booking.com again on that basis.

I tend to do that too now after a terrible experience where our accomodation was canceled at midnight the day before a funeral we were travelling to.

There's lots of very dodgy looking listings too now that looks like empty doss houses. Not sure what that's about.

I’ve had bad experiences with them and would never use them again or recommend them to friends.

My information has been leaked by them multiple times as I started receiving WhatsApp messages with my full name, address and booking reference from scam artists. Booking.com denied any leaks! …..so how did scammers get my booking reference and exact dates I had booked?

Another occasion the hotel I booked had closed down. No email contact from booking.com. Turned up to find it closed! Left needing an emergency last minute hotel.
Had to raise a chargeback with my bank to get a refund.

I had a nightmare with booking.com, trying to cancel a reservation. Their customer services department is basically non existent. This is reflected in its 1-star rating on Trustpilot.

The thing is, with all commercial transactions, sometimes it’ll go well and sometimes there’ll be a problem. The factor that differentiates the good companies from the crap ones, is how they deal with problems. Booking.com just don’t want to know. Once they’ve got your money, they don’t care.

I think you have been very unlucky. I always use it to book hotels and have never had any issues at all. I don't book new listings though, as I only book ones with a lot of good reviews.

I’ve used them many times over the years with no problems but I’m not sure I would use them now.

There are currently two properties listed for rental in my street that don’t exist. My neighbours have contacted Booking.com repeatedly to tell them these properties don’t exist yet the listings are still there several months later. We’ve had at least 20 sets of people turn up trying to find “Apartment 1”, knocking on doors and we’ve had to tell them it’s a scam. I’m assuming they have also complained to Booking.com. The reviews on these properties are either 5 star (and clearly fake) or say they were contacted on the morning of booking and sent to a completely different, and much worse, address.

Never had an issue but i look very carefully at reviews. Have booked hotels and apartments.

Same for Airbnb - no issues - usually only book the very well-reviewed places.

Same in Manhattan but we stayed in Brooklyn went we went to New York!

Like PP, I now only use Booking as a search engine to find potential hotels/self catering apartments to stay in. I no longer book through it for three reasons 1. Their communication platform is crap. Trying to resolve even small problems is a complete PITA. 2. The scams. So many scams. 3. It’s often not cheaper than going direct.

Never had an issue with either Booking.com or AirBnB and we’ve booked all over Europe and Australia. We always check reviews won’t use anything with a low rating.

I've used them for years. I've had a few problems in that time but recently it seems to have got worse.
We do quite a lot of road trips with multiple hotel stops and I find it easy to book on there rather than managing loads of direct bookings. On our last trip I had 2 different attempts at scamming me. Not the actual hotels but someone who had somehow got my details and was trying to make me pay outside of booking.com. I always take the option to pay at hotel if possible but otherwise pay via booking.com if necessary. On both occasions, I contacted booking.com fraud and they were very good. The actual hotel bookings went smoothly but it has made me a bit wary of them now. I've got another trip booked in the summer so I will see how that goes.

I closed my (ancient) account with them because it got hacked and was being used to scam people somehow. I had supposedly booked a big house for loads of money so I advised them I hadn't. No money involved from my side as I hadn't booked anything so I just got my account shut down. Wasn't a password I used anywhere else though so made me realise the site was likely compromised and have not used it since.

I use hotels.com for hotels and air bnb (very selectively) for anything else. Another who has been stung by booking.com in recent years, lots of dodgy stuff on there now, used it a lot in the past.

Had both private and hotel bookings recently with no issues but did have the messages hack on a couple of bookings that I thankfully picked up. I do try to book direct when I can but can't always get the free cancellation. Now I book multiple options and cancel the spare one nearer the time,once I've had at least some communication to confirm my main one is real. It's not fair on the hosts who are just used as a plan B but booking.com have crested the mess.

I got ripped off for nearly £200 that I did not spend on there. They wouldn't even entertain looking into it

Fingers crossed they’ve been good for me so far.

With your first issue you shouldn’t have cancelled when they asked you to. You should have called Booking and they would have found you an alternative and charged the difference back to the original property. It happened to me a few years ago with a London apartment booking. Booking.Com were brilliant.

Relatives recently used booking.com for an apartment in Spain. It was 'not as described' but booking.com were no help.
Interestingly same relatives also had issues with an apartment elsewhere booked through Airbnb and got a partial refund without much difficulty.

Oh no. I’ve used them a lot and not had issues. But I’ll be a bot
more wary now. Hope you find somewhere.

I have used them for years, probably hundreds of times, but I never would now.

It’s not only the scams and the hacks, it’s the discounted rooms booked with “partners” aka mysterious third parties who have their own terms and who, if anything goes wrong Booking.com can’t help you and neither can the hotel.

It just isn’t worth it for me now I have a young child. My last two bookings were done through Hotels.com and direct.

Call me old fashioned but I like showing up and knowing I’ve actually booked a place. I like being able to talk to a human being on the phone if I need to.

It used to be great but I just don’t trust it anymore.

“Have used Airbnb a couple of times but I’m not a fan of them because of all the accommodation is removed from the rental market”.

So how is this any different to Booking.com, VRBO or any of the others ? If it’s a house on any platform presumably it’s removed from the rental market ?