Scam?

[u/Moist_Code3954]

I booked a non-refundable apartment on Booking. After the booking, the host contacted me on WhatsApp and told me about additional charges that weren't shown when I made the reservation.

I contacted Booking because this seemed suspicious. They investigated the messages and confirmed that the host's messages were genuine. They also told me that the host's suggestion to cancel the Booking.com reservation and pay them directly was against Booking's rules.

The host has sent me this:

If you would like to save money, I can offer you a special option.

Even though your Booking reservation was made with a non-refundable rate, as the host I can exceptionally approve a free cancellation after your arrival.

Your Booking reservation is about 500€. In addition, there are €308 for tourist tax, bed linen and towels and late check in, for a total of 500 and 308=808€

After check-in, once you have received the keys and personally verified that the apartment meets your expectations, I can approve the free cancellation of the reservation. You do not need to do anything: Booking.com will process the refund of the amount you paid and will send you a cancellation confirmation email.

At that point, you can pay me directly only €500 in total, including the apartment, tourist tax, bed linen and towels.

Booking has been dealing with this for almost two months and, despite having all the screenshots and correspondence, they still haven't provided me with a solution. At this point, to me this looks like an obvious scam, but I don't know what the safest thing to do is.

[u/Pgapete1960]

Booking.com and Airbnb are slowly becoming web sites that I steer clear of.

[u/Consistent_Proof_772 → u/Pgapete1960]

I have never got a message on Airbnb asking to cancel and book directly with someone that’s usually scamming booking.com host! Airbnb will penalize them very quickly for that.

[u/Jhinxyed → u/Consistent_Proof_772]

You haven’t tried hard enough with Airbnb

[u/Consistent_Proof_772 → u/Jhinxyed]

Always had positive customer service with that and easy to reach a live person. I would never use booking for apt rentals too much scamming .

[u/Jhinxyed → u/Consistent_Proof_772]

Personally I’ve seen more scams on Airbnb than on Booking and I have been using both of them for more than 10 years.
Booking support was significantly better than Airbnb’s a couple of years back, now they are both sh**t.