In June I booked a villa in Greece through Booking.com. It was around £3,000. I paid via bank transfer from my online bank account. The day after I paid, my booking was cancelled.
I immediately contacted Booking.com who were very reassuring and told me not to worry, they would investigate. They could see that it was a fraudulent property that had advertised on their site so we were covered. They asked me to send them some details, proof of transaction etc. There began 4 months of hell.
I’d send them something, call a few days later and they’d want something else. Sometimes something I sent was in the wrong format (they’d want a PDF not a picture). They told us they couldn’t take it forward until our bank had tried to recover the money. We tried that. Our bank looked into it but couldn’t help and sent us a formal letter documenting this which we dutifully sent onto Booking. Com.
We are now stuck. They just keep repeating to us that either a) we haven’t sent them all the information or b) when we point out we have, they say it’s not in a valid format. They can’t specify what that format should be though.
We don’t know where to go next. Booking.com is based in the Netherlands so I’m not sure I can take them to the small claims court. Any advice? Thank you.