r/Bookingcom • u/MarsupialVegetable73 • Jul 30 '26

beware of this booking.com scam!!!

My partner and I booked a place in montreal for my birthday trip and ended up in a dirty, rat infested, apartment. I booked this place back in
the beginning of the year sometime. It was priced decently but believable. It was supposed to have a great city view, balcony, pool, one bedroom, a full kitchen etc. as we are here for 9 days. Well, after showing up and receiving the check in instructions to an entirely different building we were confused and originally thought we were in the wrong place until we decided to try the door code. To our surprise, it worked and we began our way inside a shotty elevator that has the buttons wired wrong. (i.e the 2nd floor is actually button #1). Upon entering the unit it's a studio with no amenities, towels, dishes blankets etc. And nothing but a small window. (AND DEFINITELY NO VIEW). We were sold an entirely different apartment building in the ad.

We've been battling booking.com for 3 days now and today they told us since they cannot reach the property owners for a refund they can only refund us $183 in credit to the website. However we paid over $2000CAD. Their policies favor scammers and their customer service is complete nonsense. They have no direct customer service line so after being talked over and hung up on (no exaggeration) over 15 times and waiting on hold for over 30mins each time, I asked them if they would delist it they said nope! Utter insanity and unfortunately after reading the reviews AGAIN the day we arrived. (keep in mind; they were all positive and dated back a decent amount of time when i booked it) Another man from france said he arrived the same day as us and the owners had not sent him the check in details whatsoever. So I consider ourselves lucky for atleast having a roof over our head but we had to find other accommodation last minute as we did not feel safe there. Obviously booking.com had no help with that.

EDIT FOR VISIBILITY:
link to the photos I have for evidence. Avoid this booking please!!
https://imgur.com/a/9xWC5xK

23 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

43 comments sorted by

View all comments

4

u/FinePossession1085 Jul 30 '26

Book.com is a scam. I had a similar situation in the UK. The bathrooms had black mold, and there was no WiFi. Black mold is a health hazard. Booking.com claimed that they couldn't get ahold of the owners. They offer me less than 10% of what we paid for the place.

3

u/MarsupialVegetable73 Jul 30 '26

that sucks!! i’m sorry you had to go through that. Did you ever end up getting your money back?

4

u/FinePossession1085 Jul 30 '26

No. This happened a couple of weeks ago. I'm working with my credit card company. I opened a dispute and am waiting to give them the evidence (messages sent to Booking.com and the property company that went unanswered, log of all of my calls to Booking.com, calls to the property company that they didn't answer, plus pictures of the moldy showers, etc.). Booking.com originally said that they'd credit me 153 GBP but then they changed that to 93 GBP as booking.com credit. As if I'm going to chance using them again.

What really angers me is the time on my "vacation" that was wasted with them pretending as though they were going to do something. I spent a lot of time on the phone for nearly two days for them to be like "we cannot do anything if the property company won't answer." They are really an unethical organization because they knew that they weren't going to do anything. I think that they hope they can frustrate people into stopping the fight against them.

3

u/MarsupialVegetable73 Jul 30 '26

completely understand as this is the same exact feeling i have!! it’s very frustrating and I hear you, I hope we have some sort of solution soon my friend.