Hi so first time using booking.com and had a stay booked. On Monday I received an email from booking.com saying that basically I needed to pay for the stay or my reservation would be cancelled I thought it was a bit dodgy but the email I received had previous genuine correspondence on from the hotel. I rang the hotel to check if this was genuine or not. She logged onto her side of the booking com and read the message at her end and said yeah its genuine.
So I followed the link and paid £367.
Literally just as I had paid the money and then the hotel rang me back and said don’t pay it is a scam through the system somewhere.
I couldn’t believe it. Then a second payment came through to be approved to the scammers but I obviously declined the second payment.
I got straight onto monzo and explained the situation. I have sent all info across to them. (Screenshots of the email and call log of when I rang the hotel). I keep messaging them every so often but they keep saying they have no update yet and it is still under investigation and with the specialist.
I got onto booking.com.and sent all info to them. But they can’t do anything. They want a letter from monzo to say if they can dispute the payment or not.
Does anyone have rough timescales on this. I am desperate to get the money back. £367 might not seem like a lot to some people but it really is a lot to me. I have three children one of whom is classed as disabled I had just received his dla the week before hand. Now I don’t have much left in the bank to get through the next two weeks. I had the cash saved in the house to pay for the hotel when we arrive but if i use that now and I don’t get any of the scammed money back I can’t take my children away. I feel so stupid for falling for this. I rang to check if it was genuine as I don’t believe it but when I was told it was genuine I just believed it. I’m going out my mind with worry. If anyone could just give me a rough time scale. Thank you
Scam/fraud investigations can take up to a 5/6 weeks to be fully investigated, and solution found
You’ll gain nothing from messaging monzo every day, so unfortunately you just have to wait until they’ve done their investigations into the case & hopefully reimburse you.
There must be a pretty critical security issue with booking.com if there was a scam email that even showed up on their systems. Either the hotel or booking.com would surely have to have been compromised for a scam email to be part of formerly legitimate email chain. If that’s what happened then that probably needs to be raised to booking.com as they’d need to investigate how that happened.
I can’t speak for how long it’ll take for one of the fraud team to get back to you, but I do hope you hear soon.
I’ve removed the 2nd screenshot from your message as it contained your full email address - just a bit of advice to be careful of what information you share online, even if you think it’s a safe place!
This reply isn’t helpful. People budget for things in different ways, and having an unexpected expense like this, on top of the actual hotel payment can derail budgeting plans.
The focus here should be on helping the OP with the situation they’re now in. We don’t need to start a needless debate about the OP’s spending and get this topic locked.
I’ve always tried to avoid them anyway, by using them as a search engine and then booking direct with the hotel. There are often ways to get the same or a lower price than booking.com sometimes with additional perks too. I don’t think I’ll be using them again.
So I rang the hotel asked to speak to a manager but one isn’t in apparently. The receptionist on the phone just apologised, said he would be having a stern conversation with the staff member who told me the email was genuine, basically nothing else he can do. He said ’ the good news is you can reschedule or cancel the booking free of charge as it’s not until October’ no good news about it. Just keep apologising I asked for a contact for a manager and I am going to email them a complaint.
Maybe I am a pessimist but I wouldn’t expect much from the hotel themselves. The way I see it, they’re also a victim of this fraud (even if in a different way/to a different extent).
I would chase Booking.com here as it was them whose systems were compromised leading to the loss.
Personally if I were in this situation I would Flex the card payment whilst Monzo investigate. If you have Flex available maybe run it by Monzo beforehand on chat so it’s clear what you’re doing and why.
There’s no interest when splitting the payment over 3 months and you’d only be £122 per month out of pocket until you get the money back.
