I've used Booking.com probably 100s of times, both in UK and abroad. We are away most weekend during summer and do 2-3 short breaks somewhere warm in the winter.
This is the first time I've ever had a problem, but it's making me nervous for future trips.
We booked a flat in a UK city for 2 nights. When we booked it was a new property with no reviews, but it was a good location for the event we were going to and a good price, so we decided someone needs to be first and probably that was the reason it was cheap. Booked a year ago because we expected accomodation to get more expensve/be in short supply becuase of the event. Lessons learned.
We arrived to find the lockbox that was supposed to have the key wasn't there. Other residents told us they weren't supposed to have Airbnb type arrangements and the building manager removed the boxes when he sees them, although lots of people do.
We tried to contact the owner. No answer or response to messages. We contacted Booking.com who said they'd try and contact, they had no luck. We said we'd just cancel then, but they said they have to give the owner 30 min to respond.
By this point we were getting tight for time for the event that was the purpose of the trip, and thankfully on this occasion we had the car, so were able to book a reasonably priced Travelodge a few miles out. We've since had a message to say they weren't able to make contact and the booking will be refunded. So, all's well that ends well, but it did make the trip quite stressful and could have been much worse if we'd been on public transport, as we often are for city breaks, or in an unfamiliar country.
Having looked back at the lisiting, there are multiple reviews since we booked, that make it clear this a scam (yes, with hindsight should have checked), so Booking.com knew, they knew they had our booking and didn't contact to let us know/cancel/rebook.
Is there any point complaining about that? Would you? What would you expect the outcome to be?