General Chat

Worth reading.

Customers of Booking.com have told how they lost money after falling for a convincing scam when trying to book holidays.
As previously reported by This is Money, the hotel and short let website's messaging system has been infiltrated by scammers, who tell customers that they need to pay additional fees to secure their booking and pocket the cash.
Booking previously told This is Money that this was not a breach of its site or app, but that scammers were gaining access to the accounts of hotels and apartments and messaging customers pretending to be them.
Now This is Money has heard from customers who sadly fell for the messages and handed over cash.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/beatthescammers/article-13310643/I-lost-900-Booking-com-scam-

So it's the messaging system the Hotel and apartment sites use that was breached by the scammers. You'd think activtiy on their site and customers being asked for money (not by them) would be soon spotted by them if there is monitoring of the site. It sounds like they should be refunding the money lost.

With hindsight and now the scam is known, if it were me I'd ignore chat requests for money in future and ring the Hotel to check it's genuine first.

Shocking how determined these scammers are to get hold of our money that they haven't earned and so worrying for anyone, not just the elderly these days as they keep coming up with new ways to trick us out of our money. :-|

It is never ending isn't it.Seeing that they are all connected somehow to booking.com (which we have used a lot in the past) I think they have a moral responsibility to help with the problem.