Booking.com SCAM?

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ianh100
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Location: Sherborne Dorset

Booking.com SCAM?

Post by ianh100 »

Hi All,

We had a last minute booking yesterday on booking.com, our property was not available but for some reason booking.com is not automatically pulling in our iCal data.

The booking request was very suspicious and included an incomplete phone number. I messaged the guest immediately to say I was unable to call them and that there was an issue. I included my phone number and asked them to call me. They did not reply or call.

I had several calls with booking.com who have now charged me £180 to put the guests up in alternative accommodation. I asked them where this was and they gave me the name of a local B&B, I spoke to the B&B owner this morning and they have no guests and no late booking yesterday.

This just smells like a scam to me, people making a false booking knowing they can exploit the booking.com process to get a payment.

My booking.com calendar is still not auto updating, my contract with them says I will not take a booking without a phone number (They say they can't check if a number is real but it didn't even have enough digits). They lied to me about where the guest was then booking in (or just handed them some money).

The booking message was very strange:
heya their, we are over from isle of mann but were irish travelers gyspies gonna be working in da area for a while maybie, so well mite book longer their with ya after we stays a nite or so, see ya later so
Last edited by ianh100 on Thu Feb 22, 2018 11:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
COYS
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Post by COYS »

Are you kidding?
With a booking message as poor as that (whoever they were btw) there is no way I would be touching it, scam, genuine or otherwise.
This time next year Rodney, we'll be millionaires.
ianh100
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Location: Sherborne Dorset

Post by ianh100 »

Hi COYS

I agree but you have no choice on booking.com, there is no way to vet a guest. If you don't honour the booking you have to pay any additional costs to host them somewhere else. It sucks
ianh100
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Joined: Thu Jan 10, 2013 4:37 pm
Location: Sherborne Dorset

Post by ianh100 »

An update

I requested proof of the new booking from booking.com and they send me a receipt for the B&B the guest stayed at. They stated there was no evidence of this being a scam at fraudulent.

The funny thing is I had already spoken to the owner of the B&B and she says she had no guests and only has 2 rooms. The receipt which is clearly a home made version says 3 rooms were booked and it has limited detail of the B&B, just the address they clearly got off the internet.

I told the owner and she is very annoyed as her business has been involved in this fraud.

It will be interesting to see what the booking.com response is to this. I will keep you all posted.
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CSE
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Post by CSE »

Three issues here.
First; it is your responsibility to update any calendar. I think you will acknowledge that. One should never admit to Booking you have "linked" calendars.
Second issue; The message is strange and the missing phone number. I would have contacted Booking rather than leave it to the guest to contact you. Booking prefer owners to be proactive.
Also once you contact Booking the onus is down to Booking to resolve any issues. They will have to contact the guest.
Third issue has to be broken down into sub sections. All related to how the issue was resolved.
A)is who directed the guests to the other property. Booking or did the guest choose it?
B) Is it at a comparable price to what you would have charged?
C)Is the other property also listed on Booking?
D) can you obtain a copy of a typical receipt for the other property to compare it with the one the guest gave?

No doubt there are more questions, but we feel this should be take one step at a time.
Never try to out-stubborn your guests.
ianh100
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Location: Sherborne Dorset

Post by ianh100 »

Hi Thanks for your response.

With the multiple listing sites that we use it is simply not practical to go and update them manually. We have been using iCal without any issues on all of the other sites. They have responded on this question and say that their system only updates calendars 3 times a day so still a potential for double booking. Despite all that the calendar is still not updating unless I log in and press a manual refresh button.

I can see that I left a number of settings open on booking.com that could have avoided this happening. I really dislike the way booking.com works and question if I will use it again.

They have since called me back and agreed that the booking and claim were clearly aimed at obtaining money for the uplift fraudulently and will not be invoicing me for the £180.

It seems that people have worked out that if they can make late bookings for properties that don't have all of the restrictions for upfront payment etc that they can do so in such a way that is likely to be rejected.

It seems that b.com then provide them with the payment directly and don't insist that the replacement is available for booking by their site. Had they not given me the name of the property that was allegedly booked (which I am very surprised they did) then I would have had not way of uncovering this mess. How much money can these people make by taking couple of hundred pounds across many many fake booking requests.
Giraffe
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Post by Giraffe »

Ianh100 - have you or booking.com informed the police? I don't know the contact details but they do have a fraud line. Even though they may not follow up on your case, the information helps them build a bigger picture of wider fraud, which as you suggested might be the case.
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ianh100
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Post by ianh100 »

Hi Giraffe

That's a great point, I would assume that this is not isolated but people have worked out a model to extract money from a business process that fails.

I am sure that B.com would want to keep this quiet until they can adjust their procedures. I am not sure I have enough detail to hand over to such an organization as the detail is only know to B.com

My frustration here is that b.com offer a promise with other peoples money based on the contract we decide to accept with them. They were more than happy to hand over £180 to a guest as it had no cost implications to them at all, they would just invoice me.

What really annoyed me was that when I told them they were likely to lose my business as a "customer" they always referred to me as a "partner" not a customer, to the point that this description was almost forced into their training. From where I sit it doesn't feel like a partnership.
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CSE
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Post by CSE »

Thanks Ian for taking the time to answer, perhaps some rather intrusive questions. Pleased fro you that booking has come to some sense about this.
We have found that in general they are very supportive of the businesses owner. The way this latest up date that they have done the same in this case.
We once had a phone call reservation before we could up date the Booking calendar. We contacted the Spanish office immediately, the person at the call centre understood and we prosed an alternative location. This was on Booking so it was obvious they would not loose on any commission. Of course it is really the guest who was flexible, and we are thankful for that. The owners of the other property were pleased too. We left all the negotiations down to Booking. Don't leave them over this one minor problem. Just keep the calendar updated. :)
Never try to out-stubborn your guests.
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Cymraes
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Post by Cymraes »

This is the one site that I always update manually. I only release dates there that I don't expect to fill otherwise.

I ask for phone number, address, credit card details and CVC before they can book. The site keeps suggesting I'd get more bookings if I dropped these requirements but there is no way I'm going to do so.

Glad they've resolved the issue - I guess it's too much to ask if they have blocked the individual from the site?
e-richard
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Post by e-richard »

Petr_Brzobohaty wrote:iCal update only 3 times in day? There is a big chance to get overbooking. I am so glad I have channel manager which is updated every 5 minutes.
Just to clarify:

With iCal, there is a sending site and a receiving site. Each has their own schedule and its only after BOTH have run that a sfull sync is completed, so you can run iCal at your end every 2 seconds, but unless the receiving site also runs frequently, its not going to acieve much.

On the other hand, many of the full blown Channel Managers actually interface directly in real time with some of the big listing sites. These interfaces are unique from site to site, and do not use iCal. The sync is pretty much instantaneous.
** Richard
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Nemo
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Post by Nemo »

Elsewhere, I read a post about double bookings and calendars not synching. These are owners who have listings on Airbnb and B.com. They did eventually speak to someone in B.com that admitted there has been a bug within their program.
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