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| Bed & Breakfast News | Sept-Oct 2016
Shocked by the spurious websites :
I ’ ve just done a random check of my B & B name via Google and I ’ m shocked at the number of sites which are using my details without my knowing anything about them .
Most spurious of all is lodging-world . com which purports to have a review from someone called ‘ Whistlestop ’ who says he had a ‘ freshly cooked breakfast ’. As I don ’ t DO cooked breakfast , I know this is completely made up .
A lot of them appear to be from the Booking . com stable , trying to flood my own ( as yet unfinished ) website out of the market . It is a curious anomaly that although Booking . com offered me a website with a 10 % commission rate , not one guest has ever come via that site . Funny that !
I think it would be worthwhile finding out if this is widespread practice and alerting the public to it .
AH
Going off Booking . com
We are rapidly losing our will to work with Booking . com :
1 . We get no feedback from their review system . It is impossible to work out how guests have derived their score and therefore it is impossible to determine whether any improvement or change would make things better .
2 . Booking . com no longer keep credit card details beyond 10 days from booking . So if a cancellation occurs within 2 days of due arrival , there are no credit card details with which to charge the cancellation amount . Booking . com have , without notice , transferred the risk of handling customer credit card details to the accommodation provider . We have only discovered this within the last two days and have lost two cancellation costs as a result .
3 . Booking . com customer service is abysmal . They never reply to “ inbox ” messages until a minimum of 48 hours has elapsed . Phone calls are evasive and diversive – they would rather talk about something they know about rather than the issue you called them , or they called you about !
AW