PSA: My budget hostel booking blew up in my face in Barcelona

Booked a 15 euro a night place through a random site and got there at 11pm to find the door locked with a note saying 'closed for renovations' - had to scramble for a last minute room that cost me 45 euros. Anyone else get burned by those too good to be true deals on sketchy booking platforms?

3 comments

3 Comments

fiona_lane3d ago

45 euros doesn't sound too bad actually... was that per night or total? I'm more curious about the booking site though, what was it called? I almost fell for a similar deal in Prague but something felt off about the payment page.

noah8803d ago

Yeah my buddy actually booked this "amazing deal" for a hostel in Rome last summer. It was like 30 euros per night which seemed crazy cheap for August. He got to the hotel and it was literally a construction site with mattresses on the floor. The worst part was the booking site was called "EuroStayz" or something like that and the URL looked totally legit until you noticed it had an extra letter in the domain name. He tried to get a refund but the customer service email bounced back. The whole thing was a mess and he ended up sleeping at the train station for two nights before finding a real place.

the_karen3d ago

Oh man that's rough, 45 euros is still a kick in the wallet when you thought you were paying 15. But real talk, what exactly was the name of that sketchy booking site? I feel like there's a whole underground of fake hotel booking pages that copycat the real ones. Like I've seen some where the URL is literally booking-dot-com but with a weird dash or a misspelling. Did you at least try to do a chargeback on your credit card or was it one of those prepaid debit card situations where you're just out of luck? Because that part always makes me wonder how people get their money back when the whole site vanishes overnight.