Tons of fake bookings - warning for new partners
I’ve published my guest house as new partner couple months ago. One message I want to share with everybody considering to join Booking to rent a guest house is the huge amount of fake bookings that can ruin your business.
As new partner Booking.com does not offer their payment service to you. This will take about 2-3 months (or up to 1 year in some cases) to be activated. In the meantime there is no option to ask for a pre-payment. This means no commitment from guest who book to show.
I’ve started with a pretty high rate in off season as a try out and was surprised by the huge amount of bookings. Most of them from Ghana or India filling my booking agenda for a period of 2 months. Unfortunately I found out that non of these guest have showed up, causing me a lack of income for almost the entire period because I was not able to find new guests on the short term after a no show. What I discoverer is that these are people who want to enter the country for other reasons than having a holiday or business trip and use the booking confirmation at the border to try to get a visa or enter the country.
I’ve had several calls with Booking.com but they are not willing to cancel future bookings from similar guests (who all didn’t show looking back). And in case of a no show it is your risk, costing you lot of money because you where not able to find another guest.
I still have 20 days of these kind of booking. Does anybody has a recommendation what to do to cancel these bookings? I’ve requested to cancel it but if the guest does not respond there is not an option to cancel it myself.
for all potential new partners who want to make use of Booking, please watch out and wait before publishing your property u till the payment service has been activated.
I've posted so many times about this .... you need to set up Payments by Booking.com, or switch to AirBnB etc .... view my profile and scroll down to read the comments I've posted about Payments by Booking.com and fake bookings etc
That is not the case for all new partners and must be country specific . As I got it straight away, and use prepayment via BDC always.
I've red the comments you posted and recognize your situation. I also have a 'self catering model' where guests can pick-up the key. Maybe this is causing that I can't use the payment by Booking.com right from the beginning. Or maybe it has to do with the country. Still in both situations I recommend to consider couple of times if you want to publish your property right from the beginning after registering because I want to prevent anybody from having a similar experience.
I do understand Booking.com want to validate if a property is real but there are several ways of doing this. It might be a consideration to also protect the host (or at least warn them) for fake booking in case you are not allowed to make use of the Payment by Booking.com service. I'm a super host at a competitive service and never had any fake booking or last minute cancelation using their service and hosted over 100 guests last 1,5 year.
Unfortunately, Booking.com don't care how wonderful you are .... ask them to set up Payments by Booking.com .... if they don't set it up, use AirBnB / TripAdvisor etc .... if you try using Booking.com without online payments, you'll just get more and more fake bookings, hassles and grief ....
Yep.. In my case, everything was running just fine, until a few months ago, starting end of 2021, I started receiving tons of fake reservations.
After hours spent on the phone, Booking.com made it clear, that I, as a owner of a small guesthouse, they can not do anything for me, because I don't generate enough income like a big hotel.
Since, I opened a AIRBNB, HOMEAWAY, EXPEDIA accounts and guess what??
Everything now just goes as smoothly as I could have wished.
For little businesses, "little fishes", they just don't care. Money, money, money,.... MONEY!
Pretty useless, when you're in trouble. Often, when you need help, they tell you they're going to call you back, and never do.
Simply USELESS!
I guess, it reflects the world we've been living in nowadays..!
Hi! Rogier and welcome to the Partner Community.
Thanks for sharing your experiences in fake bookings...
I also had some last year and it certainly is very annoying. To minimize fake bookings and cancellations I changed my policies.
I have added non refundable rates...so fake bookings stopped. Maybe this can help you...
Wish you luck.
Thanks for your recommendations. I'm lucky to have the Payment by Booking.com activated in the meantime and good tip to change the policies what I've done in the meantime. For any future request I expect not to face any more fake bookings based on these settings. Unfortunately I still have to deal with couple guests who already made a booking based on the old terms...
Hi Rogier de Vries,
Due to lack of the support from BDC finance department on commission issue, I have switched the Payment by BDC to prepayment requested by me on non-refundable and 14 days cancellation booking after the reservation completed. After I have changed the payment method, I do received so many fake bookings mainly from Albania, India & Pakistan. What I noticed all these fake bookings are using the same Agoda office address of Singapore with different countries name and also non-reachable telephone number. I have contacted BDC on these fake bookings and they confirmed these are from their partner Agoda (yes Agoda & Booking.com are from the mother company Priceline) and the BDC just replied to me saying they will be sending email to these bookers and requested me too to send a message to these bookers for requesting the prepayment. So I will send the message thru BDC to request a prepayment to be transferred to our bank account with dateline (mostly 2 days). After 2 days dateline,I will call BDC to cancel these fake bookings due non-received prepayment. For last minute bookings, I'm only accepting if I have more than 2 rooms availability. In case no show, I will mark no show or call BDC to cancel the bookings after timeline (CET 18.00)
Payment by BDC is great however if we are not getting any support with BDC finance then everything will be screwed up. BDC just direct debit their commission payment from your bank since we have Payment by BDC agreement. I still have issue with my commission since Nov 2019 and have sent more than 10 messages but still no action or replies from BDC Finance even though the BDC Finance is located in the Netherlands and I'm in the Netherlands too.
Sounds like your best option is to switch back to normal Payments by Booking.com so that guests pay at the time of booking, just like on AirBnB, TripAdvisor and HomeAway. It stops the fake bookings, it stops the no-shows, it saves you a lot of problems. You can also set all bookings to non-refundable so you get paid regardless. Yes, you have to wait for payment, but that's far better than having your calendar blocked by fake bookings where guests don't show up and you don't get any money. You get very little support from Booking.com at the best of times. Don't make things even more difficult for yourself!
Hi! Kathy and thanks for sharing your experience.
Cancellations are a pain in the head....last year I had many of them... I Payments by BDC but that doesnt sVtop cancellations. I had to make my policies more strict to stop them.
Very sorry to hear about your finance problems.
Wish you well.
I think I'm just scammed by my current guest. They sent fake proof of payment. It was last minute booking.
I was busy setting up my profile as I'm new. They requested my account to pay directly before the arrival.
What should I do or any advice ?
Send your bank details so they can pay online before arrival. Do not send directions and check-in details until they have paid.
I did send them and get automatic reply from Capitec to FNB as I'm using FNB.
I thought the money will clear today. I just saw that they left today afternoon. After I requested another proof of payment.
I do have their footage from CCTV.
This is the first time it happens to me. I'll publish their pictures everywhere.
Hi Azeri!
This is terrible...
Maybe you should change your payment policies.
Payments by booking.com is more secure.
Wish you all the best.
Thank you. I changed but still shocked how professional they looked not knowing they are scammers driving fency cars.
Hi Azwi, I saw your post on fake bookers, it looks like you are in South Africa, I'm also, I'm experimenting same fake booking and on top of it calls and visit to my guest houses, I start to think it is calculated by a group of people against my guest houses, how to stop it, it looks like they are spending a lot on calls and changing different numbers.
I am following them on whatsApp those scammers. They change addresses and business names every week. I just don't know how to share their pictures without putting my life in danger. They present themselves as we are coming for business.. Etc. Using business credit card... They seems like people who are stealing furnitures too.. They left with black plastic bin and after they saw 1 camera they didn't see it catched their faces and returned everything back.
Unfortunately, all scammers are fancy...
Wish you only great and kind guests?
We are in South Florida, mostly Miami-Dade and Broward and we have 8 small villas in Pompano Beach that are getting flooded with fake bookings. I have asked Booking.com countless time to switch to Payments by Booking.com even though we have many listings already like that and they just don't do it. I am so ANGRY about that. We are receiving dozens of fraudulent reservations per week. It is so stressful. This will be my last week listing these units in Booking.com if they don't resolve this issue. It is ridiculous how easy the solution is and can be applied but being neglected by Booking.com. It seems like they benefit from these scammers somehow. It is hours and hours of working for free and dealing with a bunch of criminals. our calendars remain blocked for a whole day across all channels because of Booking.com broken resevation system. And we also have those who book last minute, pressure you so you give them the check-in instructions and even show up at the property wanting to check in. Unbelievable. We, hosts, must contact the police and send the news at the same time so these criminals stop doing that.
Totally agree this is frustrating and Booking should take responsibility here. I would deactivate your advertisement until payments service have been enabled. For the time being just rent via AirBNB or other platforms. Moving forward without a solution from Booking will only cause all the fake bookings to consume to much manual efforts and potential risk of non shows.
Same here. Were tired of this. Need to find out how to cancel and get rid of this company out of out lives
yes i have exactly the same issues! they do not seem to care for small businesses
once we changed our fees to be higher by accident, lots of bookings started flooding in. None replied, no working whats app or email. We do receive credit card details but they all do not work.
They must be getting something out of these fraudulent bookings. At the client service they just pretend it is all new to them. It is awful and really ruins businesses and doesn't give real people a chance
Any idea how to cancel Booking.com. I CANNOT be part or do business with this company
We are new on booking.com and have been experiencing the same thing. I spoke with booking today I they told me nothing they can do about it (which is really bad for someone that really loves to host and see their business growing and going well)!
Hi, we are in Finland and have now received totally new fake bookings...with fake names like fpwtsa ksquvu and address and fake telephone number etc. After about 25 messages I found a telephone number from Booking that I could call and they said they cannot cancel these reservations although they are obviously fake. I have to wait for another 24 hrs etc etc. We are a small Homestay business and have always charged clients either when they check in or given them payment instructions beforehand. I didn't want to use payment service from BDC as they take commission from that too? The BDC customer advisor said that there has been an increase in fake bookings since the war. However, he said he had not seen fake bookings where there is no name (for Visa applications) or they do not ask you to click on a link and fish for email address. This sort of fake booking just blocks my diary but there is no financial gain for anyone. Except maybe BDC itself if I change the payment method? Or could it be angry neighbours? Has anyone experienced these kind of fake bookings where all the info is dlgfjsdölgjlsjglagjlagjalgj?
Hello,
Does anyone have fake bookings with just rubbish on them, like nnvkkdhfdkfkhfhfaifhoi ? What does anyone gain from those? I understand Visa applications, attempts to make you click on links etc. but just complete fake bookings that block your calender for now reason? Angry neighbours?
Can't of course get them cancelled.
Hi!
Guests make many many bookings when they are planning a trip.... at the end they decide which one is best and cancel the other ones..
Free cancelation policy that BDC advertises is allowing guests to make as many bookings as they like...
Therefore, we hosts have to make our policies more strict..
Yes, but these are not real guests or real reservations. They are just rubbish, no real names or anything. They never cancel. The only intention is to block our diary. I am just wondering does anyone have similar fake bookings and do you know why you get them?
these fake bookings are just pain in the ass. Apart from blocking our calendar they also bring along useless and redundant task for clicking on "no show" button every day for multiple listings and god forbids if you miss that then get ready for commission invoice from booking.com.
This is such an obvious problem. Don't know what booking.com was thinking. If you want guests to book a property without paying anything then atleast give hosts the ability to cancel the fake reservations. if a guest is not replying to your messages after booking your property, its pretty clear that they are just messing with you.
I agree with you totally. Give us the option to cancel fake reservstions. As soon as I have a booking I do a google search but it does not always help. I also try to ck their card information and use my best judgement to ward off fake bookings but your calendar is still blocked for 24 hours which is lost revenue. I just open up my room for another site to book and if the scammers show up they are out of luck.
These fake bookings are just pain in the ass. Apart from blocking our calendar they also bring along useless and redundant task for clicking on "no show" button every day for multiple listings and god forbids if you miss that then get ready for commission invoice from booking.com.
This is such an obvious problem. Don't know what booking.com was thinking. If you want guests to book a property without paying anything then atleast give hosts the ability to cancel the fake reservations. if a guest is not replying to your messages after booking your property, its pretty clear that they are just messing with you.
Hi, I dont think its about any migrants wanting to enter your Country by showing a booking. I am from India and I have tonnes of fake bookings, all from India itself! I think its these channel managing companies who work at the algorithims of the system to generate or divert traffic to their clients. One way is to generate continous fake bookings to their clients direct competitors so as to block their accomodations and therefore divert traffic to their client who is listed in the same area as a similiar property. So your actual culprit is your next door neighbour. The channel manager might be based in India or anywhere. This is an issue with us all new properties at Booking.com. I have a small homestay in Bikaner, India and I have only got fake bookings till now - through Booking.com. I have had a great experience with Airbnb. Their system of pre payment keeps these fakes off. I have had several messages and talks with Booking.com but they really aren't bothered.
OK, so it could be just Booking.com's rival? I suspected it was our neighbour as they do not like our homestay business.
We have listed our family home on Booking since 2016 and it has been successful up until this fall when we have started to receive fake bookings.
As mentioned here we cannot get them canceled and since we don’t use payment by booking we don’t get any compensation.
The bookings either have obviously fake addresses or something else that tells us it is fake like no replies from the guest or preferred language “russian” when the guest is from Germany.
Who benefits from this type of scam?
Why is booking so problematic to get to act to cancel or even help?
Thanks,
Bjorn
I think there should be a more strict way for customers to make a booking so these fake names, addresses, credit cards etc etc. could not be used. I have no idea who benefits from the scams, apart from rivals but if nothing is done, hotel keepers will have to start looking elsewhere as this way it is a waste of time and money to keep listings with Booking. I will not use the pre-payment system as I pay enough commission to Booking as it is and it will obviously reduce reservations if customers have to pay in advance. However, there must be a way to for Booking to identify fake reservations, at least the most obvious ones, with name and address like m,gvmcffgjaölgjöfalgj öldgj?
I totally agree with you. The ones we have had all have legit sounding names from the US but the addresses were obviously fake. However the latest fake was with an existing address & phone but the name was invented and the German lady answering my call had NO idea what I was talking about. We have contacted all customers (25) that have booked from now until next year and so far we have 8 that have not replied - scary!
We don’t want to pay more to booking than we already do so “payment by booking” is not an option…