🏨 Hotel Booking | Booking.com scams PSA

Travel International Travel
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Just a little PSA (Public Service Announcement).

I had a fraud attempt in relation to a place I booked on booking.com. I have used them a couple of years ago a few times without issue, but apparently they have massive problems with fraud these days.

I booked a place for Kaohsiung and everything looked fine. Reservation confirmed, pay at book-in upon arrival in NT$. All good

However, the next day I first received a message from the property on the Booking.com message system that said I should watch my email for an important message concerning my booking. 5 minutes later it arrived in my email inbox.

This email looked identical to real emails from booking.com. The email said I needed to provide my credit card information to they to confirm my booking. This set off my alarm bells in that booking.com has my credit card info on file, why wasn’t it just used through their site?

From there I started to dig. The email address that the email was sent from was in Italy. The invoice for the property was in Euros, not CAD(the currency of my account) or NT$.

Also, upon some digging on Google maps, the address of the property did not exist.

Finally, I did some reverse searching on Google for the photos on the listing. The kitchen was orange(!), and in a European style. Nothing exact came up, but all of the similar kitchens were in Russia. Finally, upon zooming in on the kitchen dish soap, the language on the bottles was definitely not Chinese.

Now none of these are definitive alone. However, the totality of these things definitely makes me think it was fraud.

Needless to say, I cancelled my reservation. I also messaged customer service as an fyi.

Also, upon searching online, apparently Booking.com has major fraud problems, many of which are very similar to what happened to me.

Funny enough, today their listing says “currently not accepting reservations” or something along those lines.

Hope this helps, and at least gets people thinking before sending money online.

Be safe people.

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Yeah, people have allegedly been rocking up to random houses in London saying they’ve paid for a booking on booking.com, but the resident of the house knows nothing about it, someone else has just used their address.

AirBnb also vulnerable to that one I think.

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The least I would do is checking the location of a place on Google Street View. Then I would read the reviews. Were there any reviews?

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I didn’t really pay attention to a lot of the things that I research for Airbnb (reviews, superhost, etc.). I am really thorough with my research with Airbnbs, and we have had very good experiences with the places we have rented as a result.

For Booking.com you generally don’t have to pay anything upfront, and to be brutally honest, we are pretty desperate to find a decent place in Kaohsiung. Lesson learned for sure.

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Wow demand is that high for Kaohsiung?

I just did a booking.com search for an upcoming visit to that city, and I found piles of possibilities. Maybe my dates were not during times of high demand.

Guy

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We are planning on staying for a month, prefer an apartment ,don’t want to pay over $2000USD for the month, and need a kitchen. It seriously limits things.

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NTD?!?!

Guy

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Edited just for you. My bad.

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In NT$ our budget is around 50000 NT$.

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OK NT$60,00050,000 / month should get you an extremely lovely flat pretty much anywhere in a prime location. It’s crazy that this kind of budget is making this challenging for K-Town. Maybe other forumosans can provide concrete tips? I hope you can sort this out, sans scams!

Guy

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Short term rental apartments with kitchens are difficult to find in Taiwan. It’s the normal situation.

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I completely agree. I personally think this budget is really high, especially for Kaohsiung. However, short term rentals and yearly rental prices (which are very reasonable !) seem to be completely unrelated. It is baffling really.

We are waiting on a ok place where the owner is debating whether or not he will be there before Chinese New Year (our booking is pretty much for January). He says he will let us know for the beginning of August, which makes us nervous, but it should be ok.

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True, but it seems much worse after COVID. We booked places before COVID with very little problems, after some searching. But now it is a complete battle.

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have you tried agoda.com? ive had good experience with them in the past.
they are owned by the same corporation as booking. com , but have different properties listed.

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i searched too, out of curiosity, was it clear skies tower? the orange kitchen was a giveaway.

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That is the one.

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Something geared to Japanese, like furnished apartments?

I wonder if @DKaoshuing would have some ideas on how to find such a flat in the Kaohsiung area?

Guy

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That would be great.

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Japanese house, I know Fukuoka and Sapporo are cheaper, outer suburbs few hundred USA dollar. Kansai more, which city

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Actually the poster is trying to find a flat, with a kitchen, in Kaohsiung City, not in Japan. When I wrote “geared to Japanese” I meant for Japanese people who live or plan to live in Kaohsiung. :joy:

Do you have any ideas where to find such listings?

Guy