Technology

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.

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.)

Booking dot Oh shit

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'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.

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 been burned by booking .com as well. They are massive assholes and I won’t ever use them again.

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.