Booking.com experience

Hi,
what is your experience with booking.com?

I got listed there 2 weeks ago.

So far:

2 bookings
both credit cards were declined
no contact with the guests, no response, phone numbers invalid

(So I had to mark the cards invalid in the booking.com Extranet, and the bookings will be cancelled if the guests do not provide valid cards)

Is this just a bad coincidence, or does this happen often at Booking?
Any experiences?

Best,
Thomas

It happens often, very often.
Booking.com is loosing a lot of business because more and more people are moving away from them, because of these kind of things. Booking.com provides zero service but takes 13%.

But they are slowly waking up, because they are loosing a lot of business to AirBnB, Homeaway and other that do provide more service to hosts.

I know they have some béta programms where they check and charge credit cards at booking.
Some hosts I know are in this programm.

For me it’s working better since I asked booking to put the CVC number from guests. I have less problem

I also have the CVC numbers, but unfortunately, both cards were declined. (I tried to charge 1 USD after that - also declined.)

If you are not new, can’t you do non refundable policy and client have to prepay?
It’s seems in this case that booking is taking care of payment (new policy they are doing)

I am new so I can try this way

I have the following policy:

50 percent of the total amount may be charged anytime after booking.
50 percent of the total amount will be charged at least 30 days prior to arrival.

This is the strictest policy I could select.

Unfortunately, there was no option that Booking would charge the guest. They just collect the credit card number and show it to me. Then I can (try to) charge.

Use the search function on here to search booking.com there are loads of topics discussing it :slight_smile:

I just called booking.com.

They now have the option to charge the guests 30% at booking.
They will do this for you, but it is not an online option, you have to call them.

Is it also working for new hosts?

Do you have more details regarding this?, how much is booking charging hosts for the service?,

Thanks in advance

Just call them, they charge nothing extra.

It also saves them a lot of work canceling each booking.

ok thanks I will do that

O its not a coinsidence. Actually MOST of the time it happens. I listed through them for 1 year and started getting really bad guests and stopped it.

Update:

I also just stopped it.

100% fake bookings, 100% fake credit cards.

Also, booking.com was unable to provide me with the credit card information online. I had to call every single time and wait for 20 - 30 minutes.

For the last booking, they refused to give me the credit card details. According to the agent on the phone, “booking.com does not store credit card information” (after having waited for 16 minutes).

Yeah, right.

Too much trouble, no money.

My question concerning the ability of booking.com to charge the guests’ cards (as mentioned here) directly was ignored.

I asked and yes it’s possible but you you need to have done a few months and a few booking before they can offer you the option.

Basically, booking.com can directly charge the client when they book a part of the booking.

For me since I put the CVC number, I didn’t had any more problems

1 Like

Booking.com has been horrible for me and I am still trying to get the credit card information even though I need it to book. I am going ask them to delist me as well unless they provide a valid credit information. I hate that they now advertise free cancelations, which leads to a lot of day dreamers with fake bookings.

2 Likes

Booking.com is just TERRIBLE! Made me go through lots of stress today afternoon.

It happens really often for me too!

run away from Booking.com as fast as you can. Only problems, terrible guests, fake cards, no communication, cancellations all the time…

I wish I could but I have more than 70% of my booking from them.

I get lots of bookings from Booking.Com, mainly from China, 99% of these cancel!