One of our readers has exposed an elaborate scam on popular site www.booking.com.
For a point of reference, if you search “Tonight Homestay” you may get listings like this:
https://www.booking.com/hotel/cn/gui-su-min-su-nan-jing-dong-lu-dian.en-gb.html
For starters, booking.com lists the location as excellent. It gives it a 9.5 score.
However, the location is extremely far from Nanjing Road. 3.6 kilometres thereabouts.
This is the exact booking on booking.com.
According to our reader, booking.com instructed our reader to make direct payment to the accommodation. The reader made the payment to Tonight Homestay East Nanjing Shanghai via Alipay.
If true, it is rather worrying that booking.com will endorse such a transaction. One of the reasons why travellers deal with booking sites like booking.com is because they want the platform to be the middleman between them and the accommodation that they are booking. If there is an issue, there is a proper middle person to deal with the recourse.
However, if the platform is getting the customer to transfer the payment to the accommodation direct, this removes the level of protection. What happens if monies are paid and the accommodation is not provided? What protection does the traveller have then?
This is the state of the property that our reader and her family are in.
This is the view from the property. Our reader was told that the property had a view of the bund. Instead, it is next to a construction site with constant noise from the construction site.
The accommodation is a dilapidated old building. From the looks of it, the building should be well over 40 to 50 years!
The tennis court is extremely run down with little maintenance.
There are supposedly blood stains on the sofas.
One of the room doors looks like there was some forced entry and the door frame broke.
The toilet was not working. Therefore the reader’s family could not use it.
The toilet doors were translucent and you could look into the toilet when someone was inside using it.
The blinds were old and ill maintained.
The water clogged up at the shower area. Therefore, combining the issue with the faulty wc, this meant that the family only had one effective toilet to go around.
The state of the shower area is appalling…
Look al the state of the stove and the pots left on the stove. We will be shocked if there are guests even willing to use the stove!
This is the actual location of the property. This is a far cry from the one advertised on booking.com.
We have told our reader to go to booking.com to lodge a complaint. We also asked our reader to provide us with pictures of the compound. According to our reader, there are aged grandparents living in the accommodation and it is extremely dangerous for them to navigate the compound at night as it is very dark and dilapidated. There are also a lot of stray cats roaming the compound.
As for the good reviews that were given, we believe that they may not be genuine. In this day and age of AI, these reviews can be generated with many fake accounts all over the world to make them seem genuine.
We will be reaching out to the booking sites through our channels and looking into this matter in the coming weeks.
Yours sincerely,
a very concerned Mei Chua…
