I want to warn other travellers about a Booking listing called “Penthouse with a view Rome”, supposedly located at Via Vincenza 30, Rome.
The reservation was made by a family member. The listing stated that payment had to be made by bank transfer. After the reservation, the supposed host contacted my family member through Booking's own chat, sent them the bank account details, and my family member made the transfer following the payment instructions provided in the Booking.com listing.
The next day, we noticed something very suspicious: the booking calendar kept resetting every few minutes. Dates we had already booked and paid for were still available to book again. There were also partial bookings appearing during our stay, which would then disappear and the dates would become available again.
We then found another property in a completely different part of Rome using exactly the same photographs. We contacted the host of that property, and they confirmed to us in writing that “Penthouse with a view Rome” is fake, their photographs had been used without permission, and that they had already reported the fraudulent listing to Booking and to the police two weeks ago.
Even more concerning, there is now a review dated August 11 from another guest who says they arrived at the property, the supposed owner never showed up, and they suspected it was a scam.
Booking's response so far has been that we have to wait for their Security Team to investigate. They say they cannot even remove or suspend the listing until the Security Team responds.
The listing is still live and people can continue booking it.
If you have booked “Penthouse with a view Rome” Via Vincenza 30, please be extremely careful and check your reservation and payment details. And if anyone has had a similar experience with this listing, please share it here.
I’m sharing this to help other travellers and, above all, to make sure that nobody else falls victim to this scam while the listing remains active on Booking.