After having been renting my property on Airbnb for several years with great satisfaction, I recently decided to give expansion a go by trying out Booking.com as well… It was a grave mistake.
To begin with, I found the sign-up process extremely unintuitive and user-unfriendly; outright primitive in comparison with Airbnb. Nevertheless, that was something I could cope with and moved on with registering my property on Booking.com’s directory… Then the problems started.
The first issue was related to the ‘location verification’. They were supposed to mail me a physical letter with a verification code which I would provide them with in order to verify my property’s address. Well, two months later, I am still waiting… and they still prompt me, rather aggressively, to verify my damn location.
Then appeared the prohibitive issue. For some bizarre, irrational reason, they wouldn’t let me use a bank account to receive my payments that is registered in any other country than the one where my property is located. Why??? Sorry, you know, my property is located in a country of which I am not a resident and in which I do not have a working bank account. What’s so strange about it? I have never have encountered a similar issue before and I was left bewildered. Furthermore, since both the countries in question are EU member states – without having searched thoroughly about it – I have the impression that this approach violates the European Common Market Law.
Anyhow, this made it plainly impossible for more to receive payments from Booking.com. I did not, however, yet resolve to quit the platform altogether. Since I had given the effort already, I thought I could leave this open until the next time I go to the country where the property in question is located and I can open a new bank account there for that particular reason. So, instead of looking into deleting my account right away, I just made all future dates unavailable.
Then, out of nowhere, came the bomb: New booking! And I’m like what the actual f***!
First thing, I went to cancel the booking. To my great befuddlement, I found out that – yes! – I cannot. The only thing I could do was to request the guests that they cancel. I did just that and tried to contact Booking.com as well. I only got an automated notification letting me know that, if I do not hear anything from them in 24 hours, I then can proceed with canceling the reservation of my own accord. A week later, I have heard nothing from no-one and cannot do anything about it.
At this very moment, I am still trying to figure out what I am going to do with that booking. But this is another subject.
After trying to cancel the reservation, the first thing I thought about doing, naturally, was to delete my property and my Booking.com partner account altogether. That’s when things began getting too dodgy.
Searching Google for how to do that, the first result I was shown was this Booking.com page. It stated:
Scenario 1: You have no upcoming reservations for this room/unit
1. Click the Property tab on the Extranet and select Room details/Property layout.
2. Select the room/unit you want to remove and click Delete.
This scenario applied to two of my total three listings that did not have any upcoming reservation. I followed the instructions but there was simply no Delete button.
Then I found this Booking.com community forum page where, in answer to a user complaining about the same issue, a support staff directed to this page. There I got these other instructions:
If you still want to remove your property from Booking.com you can follow these steps:
We’d be very sorry to lose you as a partner, but if you’d like to end your partnership with us, you can request contract termination by following these steps:
1) In the extranet, go to the ‘Inbox’ tab.
2) Select ‘Booking.com messages’.
3) Click on ‘Compose new message’.
4) Select the ‘Account’ topic.
5) Select the ‘Terminate contract’ subtopic, and complete the process by answering all questions.
Alright, I went to the ‘Inbox‘ > ‘Booking.com Messages‘… There was no ‘Compose New Message‘ button but I found the request to terminate the contract under ‘See Contact Options’. I sent them the following message.
Want to terminate my account. Completely disappointed from the service. Not possible to receive payments in bank account registered in other country than the one where the property is located (possibly illegal under EU common market law). Even worst, received a booking in spite of having made sure that I have all future dates unavailable. Cannot cancel this booking. Have sent cancelation request, heard nothing from the guest in a week, still cannot cancel. There is no property available. Please resolve.
I proceeded with reading more on the topic in various forums. Plenty of users have expressed their exasperation about Booking.com’s meager support and the impossibility to delete property and account even after having repeatedly contacted them.
This is outright ridiculous: a serious violation of privacy rights. Never have I ever run into any online service where one cannot delete one’s account with one simple click.
I checked my listings again. In spite of having previously gone over the calendar and checked the ‘no end date’ and ‘closed’ tick boxes, I found once again dates for my property being open! This is shameless scamming!
I closed all dates once again and I just hope they will not somehow magically become available once again. As an extra precaution against future unwanted bookings and a means to expedite my contract termination request, I took the following steps…
- I changed the titles of all my listings to ‘This is a nonexistant listing‘ (at first, I tried ‘This listing does not exist‘ but I found out that the word exist is not allowed as a part of the title).
- Then I deleted all the listings’ pictures and I added the following as the mandatory main image.
I hope they can now, at last, exhibit some elementary decency and rid me of that farse.
