Booking.com can’t do anything until they receive a letter from the bank stating that they can’t dispute the payment. I’m just going to have to hope that I receive my money back at a later date
Thanks everyone for your help
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Hi Stacey,
I, too, fell victim to the phishing scam. When I received the message I called booking.com to ask if it was legit and they had said it was. I have been waiting over 4 weeks for Monzo to investigate. Booking.com have been awful to deal with. I was scammed over 1.7k. Absolutely gutted to fall victim.
It’s shocking isn’t it. And what’s more shocking is having to wait all these weeks to get our own money back with no updates. Hope you get your money returned to you soon.
I received a full refund from monzo today thankfully
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Good to hear, the only acceptable outcome with this one 
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Good to hear!
Strangely I received an email directly via Booking.com today. It’s saying the hotel couldn’t verify my card and asks me to click a link. It’s got strange grammar in places so I’m 99% sure that it’s a scam.
I emailed the hotel off-platform to see what they say but I don’t think I’d trust the email even if the hotel says it’s fine.
I really don’t get how Booking.com can keep allowing this to happen.
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Please do not click the link no matter what anyone says it is not gneuine. The hotel told me it was genuine when it wasn’t. Because scammers were that clever and made it look like the email came from them.
I cancelled through booking.com and have booked with premier inn instead.
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Thanks!
I wasn’t going to click anything and if the hotel said it was genuine I’d have booked elsewhere.
But the hotel said they’ve been victim of an attack and that’s how this happened. It wasn’t Bcom, it was the human element.
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At a guess, I’d say that hotels are given a proxy email addresses that they can send to in order to message in the guest inbox and fraudsters are guessing the proxy addresses, which is how they can make it look like the hotel.
Pretty bad from booking.com though; there should be rules in place about who can email through the proxy.
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Having worked in the industry there are indeed proxy addresses, though from memory they’re not easily guessed. It’s a jumble of numbers and letters.
Plus the fraudsters generally tend to have the guest details including name, stay and possibly even confirmation number.
It’s a systems breach rather than inserting fraudulent comms from the inside.
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No but they are easily brute forceable (I also work in the industry and I’ve seen this a lot). But if they have the guest name: then yes they’ve gotten access to the booking.com account.
I doubt many places secure these well, lapse security at the hotels is probably to blame but booking.com could definitely tighten up with; say, two factor, better guidance, login alerts etc (none of which I think they have right now)
Hi Stacey,
Glad to hear this! I also received my money back last Friday. What a relief. Very stressful few weeks. Glad Monzo were able to return my money.
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Aw that’s great. Glad you received yours too 
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It happened to me today I was scammed 337.62£ I opened a dispute hopefully I will get my money back.
Hi, unfortunately this has just happened to me too today 
so stupid but as it was in the app I thought it was real. Can anyone confirm if I need to mark it as fraud with Monzo or only dispute the claim??
Thanks!!
Sorry this has happened to you too. Mark it as fraud too.
It’s absolutely shocking how this is being able to happen to people.
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Hi Stacy, I’ve been waiting for two weeks for monzo to refund me £1.3k for a booking.com scam. How did you get your money bank in the end? Did booking.com send the bank an email or did you just wait it out with monzo? Any advice would be super helpful!
Hi. Monzo refunded me after about 4 weeks.
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Hello! I’ve had the same scam happen. £450 out of pocket on my Monzo account. So upset. Reassured hearing many of you got this money returned with the help of Monzo. Was this on a normal Monzo debit card account or via their flex account. Mines on a debit account so hoping that won’t make it harder to get the money back.
Did any of you get anywhere with booking? I can’t quite believe how causal/vague/useless they’re being considering it’s their chat function that’s getting hacked. How is this not a bigger concern for them?
Thanks!
Hi sorry this has happened to you. Something really needs to be done about booking.com
Mine was a debit account. Booking won’t do anything at all until the bank says if they can’t reclaim the money back. But thankfully monzo seem to be able to get the majority of everyone’s money back. Took about 4 weeks to get mine back.
Booking.com need to do something. I won’t be using their site again
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