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Possible scam, Paris, Booking.com

(7 Posts)
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Farmor15 Tue 07-Oct-25 19:56:42

Was this an attempted scam? We planned a trip to Paris for a few days, and as I usually do, got onto Booking.com. Hotel rooms were quite expensive but one option that came up was an apartment. There were a few clues that it was a room in an apartment being booked, rather than the whole place. Anyway I booked and got confirmation. Yesterday I got a message from the owner reminding me that it was a homestay and also that there was a "curfew" between 7.30 pm and 7 am!!!. In Paris! He said there was a timelock on keypad access.

We felt we had no choice as it was a bit late to cancel and there was a no refund policy. However, this morning I got another message from owner, saying his wife had a tummy bug and if we didn't want to risk catching it, we could cancel and get full refund. I managed to find a hotel room for similar price, cancelled homestay and refund is on way (hopefully - PayPal was in touch).
There were only 7 reviews and the recent ones were good - no mention of curfew. 2 from last year commented about only getting full details of sharing with owner the day before.
I'm now wondering is it a type of scam - only give full details just before arrival, hoping guests will cancel but not get refund. In our case, we didn't cancel, but they really didn't want us - hence the tummy bug!

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keepingquiet Wed 08-Oct-25 09:30:22

Report it to the booking.com site?

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SeaWoozle Wed 08-Oct-25 10:49:59

Report this to Booking.Com for sure. If nothing else happens at least they'll be aware.

We've just come back from Romania and were hugely let down by our apartment stay owners. Agreed to meet at a set time, er called, they didn't answer. Rang from our three phones. Still didn't answer. Messages to say that we had to be somewhere else and would return later. Saw message but didn't answer. Long story short, they never did answer and Booking.Vom had to intervene. Owners lied and said we'd communicated and we ended up finding a stunning apartment down the road. Wish we'd booked that one all along! Turns out that said apartment is no longer taking bookings. Just hoping we get our money back from Booking.Com.

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Jaxjacky Wed 08-Oct-25 12:52:53

Reported

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Farmor15 Wed 08-Oct-25 13:47:06

Interestingly when checking if curfews in Paris apartments were common, I found this article from a couple of years ago:
www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jul/12/airbnb-flat-in-paris-turned-out-to-be-one-room-with-an-8pm-curfew?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
It sounded suspiciously like my experience, except that I didn't cancel when I found out about the curfew and seem to be getting a refund due to "illness" of owner's wife.
I will be getting on to Booking.com to report.

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Farmor15 Wed 08-Oct-25 13:49:09

We are enjoying Paris and got to see the restored Notre Dame this morning. The small hotel I found at short notice is fine- with no curfew!

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Cath9 Wed 15-Oct-25 21:13:33

This evening I was informed that the company have had a lot of scams which seem to now be everywhere.
This week I also had trouble with the same company

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