Overnight at the British Prime Minister's office on Downing Street and the chance to meet a celebrated tenant: Cat Larry – specified an offer appeared on Booking.com. This is simply a provocation of British consumer journalists on the ‘Whose’ service, which they believe shows that the platform protects customers besides poorly from fraud. Service dismisses charges.
You can't hide it: it looked like a perfect opportunity. "One-room flat in the heart of London" encouraged an announcement, illustrated by a photograph of celebrated black doors with ten. Tourists may besides have been tempted to know that a four-minute walk would be needed to get from the flat to the celebrated Parliament building.
Only 1 review appeared under the announcement, but enthusiastic. A Mr Trevor wrote with delight, "It's amazing that Booking.com allowed us to live at the British Prime Minister's house." He besides added that he would perfectly remember gathering Larry the celebrated Downing Street resident. Price? Occasional: 272 pounds for 5 days stay and this in the summertime season, in July. For comparison, the PAP correspondent checked the rates in the nearest area between 1 and 6 October. The lowest was over £900.
However, dreams of staying on Downing Street were unrealistic from the beginning, due to the fact that the creators of both the announcements and reviews were journalists of the website Which.co.uk. As they themselves admit, they were amazed that the hoax was successful, even due to the fact that they gave the address Downing Street 10 in the announcement. "We felt that exposing the Prime Minister's residence as a vacation flat was so absurd and it looked so apparent that Booking.com would block it. He didn't block it. Instead, the offer was published, and after a fewer hours we were able to accept reservations,” says the article.
The provokers managed to make reservations from another account. The platform collected money, and at the time of writing the article their return did not occur. Journalists informed the service that the offer was a fraud, and on 31 August they received an email informing about the cancellation of their stay. They point out that it is not clear from the message whether they will receive a full refund or the service will hold part of the amount as a handling fee or booking fee.
The authors of the text argue that the fact that specified an announcement has not been blocked, and contrary to Booking.com's statements, that the content of the review is subject to the publication of moderation, shows that portal safety – frequently automated – does not defend customers from contortionists.
Booking.com supports the allegations, highlighting in a message sent to the portal that provocation is not representative. "In fact, the Which squad managed to make a trial offer and make reservations utilizing their controlled accounts, but this does not reflect the experience of the vast majority of offers on our platform," the Communication says. It was added that due to the fact that the announcement was active briefly, any of the automatic fraud detection mechanisms simply had no chance to work effectively.
"We usage a wide scope of tests, verification tools and artificial intelligence to aid us detect and remove most of the false offers within 24 hours", the Communication stressed.
APW, PAP
