Honestly, while Booking.com acted shittily here, I have absolutely no sympathy for anyone who buys a home and does short-term rentals. Every investment vehicle has risks, and this woman copped the short end of the stick when it came to the risk associated with her investment choice. She chose to purchase a basic human need and try to maximise her profit from it at the expense of the average person trying to buy or rent a house and, if she didn’t want the risk of this happening, she should’ve chosen a less risky investment like bonds or a term deposit.
Landlords are bad; fuckwits who own short-stay rentals are far worse. The market distortion they create hurts so many people in so many ways. Frankly, I hope she takes this as a sign she should just sell the property and move on to something else.
The adage “don’t hate the player, hate the game” comes to mind. Focussing on her in this situation is missing the forest for the trees. Here we have two evils fighting each other, a horrible system aimed at ultimately monopolizing the hotel market, and one woman enabled by that system. Focussing on her is like writing a little book against communism and about how much you hate Russia, during the holocaust. Like, yeah sure ok, but is now really the best time to do this, and when you look at these two sides fighting each other that’s the side you focus on?
Nah, this lady sucks. Trying to cash in on short stay market while denying others a permanent place to live is a dick move. I hate the players and the game because the game they are playing hurts most of us while some snoby bitch complains about a couple of holes in a wall.
Yeah ok, sure, but again I feel like you’re focussing on the wrong thing here. It’s like you’re watching a video of a homeless man being beaten up, see someone jaywalk in the background and go “oh my god I can’t believe someone just jaywalked!”. Like, yeah, sure, you’re completely right, that is a bad thing to do, but I feel like there’s more important things going on here, and it’s really quite odd to focus on that, instead of the bigger evil here.
To be really super duper clear here: I think you’re right, the lady sucks. But there is a bigger problem here, namely booking.com. And focussing on the small fries rather than the bigger picture is just kind of weird. If anything we said or did on Lemmy mattered at all I’d say you were harming the greater good of bringing down booking by focussing on one tiny little instance of a symptom of the system rather than the system itself.
Or is this a fundamental disagreement in how to solve systemic problems? I believe systemic problems can only be cured with systemic change, like regulation, going after the root cause of the problem. Some folks believe it’s a matter of personal responsibility, and they believe that huge systemic problems can be solved by going after one individual at a time.
You seem to be under the impression that booking.com provides property management services. I’m not aware of them doing any such thing, but if they do them she should absolutely raise a dispute under her contract for those services. A quick scan of their information page for property owners is pretty clear, though, that it’s the property owners’ responsibility to get insurance if they need it (they even have some partner links for insurance providers.)
Using booking.com to advertise and resell her business does not change the fact that managing that business is entirely on her. If she doesn’t want to put in the minimum effort, or expense (e.g. insurance) required, she should get out of the business of property letting.
You can hate booking.com for many reasons, but “not running my spare property as a hotel for me so I can just sit back and count the cash” isn’t really one of them.
Booking dot Oh shit
I hate not to join a pileon, but if the landlady didn’t want to deal with the consequences of letting random strangers into her property unsupervised for money, she shouldn’t advertise her property for random strangers to occupy for money.
Short term rentals are a business, not a free money machine. Even rent extraction requires slightly more effort than just depositing the cheques - dealing with customers’ behaviour is a cost of doing business. If, like most short-term let grifters, she is not capable of handing that responsibly she should get out of it (and good riddance - short term rentals do no good and plenty of harm to society.)
I’ve dealt with booking.com. Sent pics of what was clearly a homeless flophouse and not a vacation rental.
Customer service: were denying your refund claim because the manager says what you said and the pics you sent are not true.
I only had problems with booking.com one time and their customer services wasn’t at all helpful. I had to go through my bank and do a chargeback, but fortunately I got my money back in the end.
„The room I booked said sea view and own bathroom. The one I got the key for has a shared bathroom outside and there’s a wall outside the window. Also, it hasn’t been cleaned. There’s nobody here and they don’t answer the phone“ Booking.com human, after arguing with their moronic AI for a while: I am sorry, all I can offer you is a 10% refund.
Straight up charge back. Then sue them for fraud.
Right, because everyone can afford those legal fees.
And its sure to be worth the time and money, netted out.
Charge back will have no fees, and theyre not going to come after you for the money legally as they know theyre in the wrong.
And in many countries defending against them if they do challenge the chargeback is also free, except for time.
I was talking about the ‘and then sue them’ part.
Sueing someone… is an ‘offensive’ legal action, its something you initiate, not ‘defend’ against.
Oh god no, yeah suing them is stupid. Just chargeback. Thatll cause booking.com endless trouble in itself.
Uff I never had a bad experience with them, I got my refund very quickly the only time I had a major issue but I’ve not used them in a while
Lately I check these “discount hotel” websites and then check directly with the hotel to get a price match. They usually do with Priceline, agoda, booking, experian and hotels.com
I’m glad the regulator is at least taking an interest.
Sadly this is just how large corporations work in 2026. Say what you will about booking dot com, but all of these middle man companies are the same.
Like if you’re an uber driver or door dasher or airbnb host, the company is always gushing with platitudes about how you’re a valued partner, until something goes wrong. At that point there’s no one to talk to and you very quickly discover that they hold all the cards. As in: if you build a business “partnered” with a much larger corporation, you are entirely at their mercy in any kind of dispute.
They will not seek a balanced, fair, or reasonable outcome because they know that you don’t have any choice but to accept what they offer.
i always book hotels by calling them directly. booking.com got highly recommended by a co-worker last week, because it is “so fast and easy”. it says “reliable customer service” on their web page
Booked a place for relatives to stay nearby. Found out an hour beforehand they had double booked. We had to scramble and find something last minute, ended up splitting the booking between two places to cover our dates, and spent almost double what we budgeted for.
Booking offered a $20 credit on a future reservation. Will never use them again.
Funny. I have a property on booking.com, so I also know the other side. They love to tell the host that they are liable to pay for the alternate accommodation booking gives the guests in case of double bookings. This is actually my second biggest fear as a host, to get a huge hotel bill during peak season if for some reason a double booking slips through. It’s right after people burning the place down.
I figure with Booking.com I’m going to end up with a windowless, roach infested hotel room anyway, so I look for properties with reviews like “No windows. Lots of roaches. But a lovely breakfast.”
Never use them, or expedia or the others. Book direct always.
I’ve tried, many times. And almost always the hotels own website either didn’t have rooms available or the price was higher. So i stay with booking.com. Luckily never had a problem, and I like to book several free cancellation hotels til I have the travel dates set. But yeah I really wish I could get better prices directly, I even called a hotel in my last trip to japan and they had higher prices
But I’m level 3 genius!
They take a hefty commission.
I’ve been burned by booking .com as well. They are massive assholes and I won’t ever use them again.
Same experience here!
Had to go through the credit card company for a charge back. Took 4 months from start to finish to get a full refund.
I use booking all the time. When looking for a hotel et search via booking then make reservations through the hotel website directly.
Sometimes we’ll use it for smaller places like bed n breakfast places because that’s how they operate.
But we never had any problems with them.
Sometimes booking.com is so integrated that even if you do the booking directly with the hotel, you will be presented with a confirmation and charge from booking.com, this is beyond frustrating, to me at least.
