Paying for London accommodation by bank transfer ?

bobgaf

Hi.
We intend to go to London for a few days. As there are 5 of us traveling, we are hoping to get an apartment. I saw some potential candidates on booking.com and followed up with one ( South Kensington Elegant Apartments ). They have requested payment by bank transfer to a well known UK bank. When I questioned why the payment could not be taken by credit card, they said it was down to their processing agent. They do state the following on their page on booking.com : South-Kensington-Elegant-Apartments reserve the right to request payments by bank transfer. When I contacted booking.com, they said that some companies using their services transact business in this manner. The reviews on booking.com are all positive but I tend to be wary of these. There is not a lot of other info that I could find on the web about this company.
Some my questions are :
Has anyone used South-Kensington-Elegant-Apartments or similar and what was their experience, particularly related to paying ? I know this is a long shot.
Has anyone else used booking.com or similar when staying in London and had to pay in this manner ?
Thanks in advance.

Beano

Run away quickly. A common enough scam. They only take bank transfer as they probably dont own the apartments and will do a runner with the cash. You show up at the apartment and the door is answered by the owner. They say on their booking.com page that they do take credit cards. Presumably when you tried to book they said they couldnt and that they also want the full amount up front?

http://www.booking.com/hotel/gb/south-kensington-elegant-apartments.html

L1011

Far too high a risk of being a scam, find somewhere else.

Mick Murdock

Do Booking.com not offer any guarantees? I would have thought anyone on there was verified?

bobgaf

Thanks for the responses.

booking.com say they have had no issues so far with this group.

From the booking.com terms and conditions :

Subject to the limitations set out in these terms and conditions and to the extent permitted by law, we shall only be liable for direct damages actually suffered, paid or incurred by you due to an attributable shortcoming of our obligations in respect to our services, up to an aggregate amount of the aggregate cost of your reservation as set out in the confirmation email (whether for one event or series of connected events).

Beano

I wouldnt be depending on booking.com to sort out any problems for you. Paying for anything by bank transfer is a mugs game. you have absolutely no comeback at all. There is no shortage of property to rent in london so look elsewhere.

Mick Murdock

I'd guess they're ok but there's no way I'd risk it.

jimmycrackcorm

bobgaf wrote: »

Thanks for the responses.
H
booking.com say they have had no issues so far with this group.

From the booking.com terms and conditions :

Subject to the limitations set out in these terms and conditions and to the extent permitted by law, we shall only be liable for direct damages actually suffered, paid or incurred by you due to an attributable shortcoming of our obligations in respect to our services, up to an aggregate amount of the aggregate cost of your reservation as set out in the confirmation email (whether for one event or series of connected events).

That means they're only liable for their own direct errors, not for the accomodation issues.

Oryx

The only time I paid directly to a bank for accomodation, it was for a villa in spain, through a direct booking site run by villa owners. In my case, it worked out, but I had spoken to the lady involved and checked out the bone fides of the situation as best I could. Its a situation I would be VERY wary of, as you are going purely on trust. Get it wrong and you have no comeback whatsoever.

Tripadvisor seem to have quite a few mentions of bogus apartment rentals in London, you might want to check them out.

dudara

They may be a perfectly valid company, but you have ZERO comeback if anything goes wrong. Paying by credit card offers more protection. I'd be looking for alternatives. Have you tried Airbnb?

bobgaf

Appreciate the input so far. airbnb looks interesting.

usernamegoes

dudara wrote: »

They may be a perfectly valid company, but you have ZERO comeback if anything goes wrong. Paying by credit card offers more protection. I'd be looking for alternatives. Have you tried Airbnb?

I've had issues with Air BnB. They say they don't charge your card unless confirmed by the host, but hidden in the terms it says they pre-authorise the card (might as well be a charge) which takes 2-5 business days to get released.

So there I was in London, booking places to stay for that night and the rest of the week, 3 people had for whatever reason refused my booking then the 4th my card was maxed out. They have pre-auth a couple of grand on my account, all my spending money. Said it would take bank time to release it.

Five Lamps

I am not surprised that they are looking for a transfer - you are booking for 5 people. They're managing their risk of you cancelling at short notice and looking for a chargeback on a credit card.

Read the reviews online, if good go ahead if you like it.

Sam Mac

Don't do it. Not worth the risk, especially because of the amount of money involved. Find somewhere that accepts card.

bobgaf

Update:
Received a mail from booking.com advising us to refrain from passing any details to the other party involved. This was a turnaround from earlier phone advice from them which indicated no issues with the other party. Just checked booking.com and found the following :
South-Kensington-Elegant-Apartments is temporarily unavailable on our site
Thankfully, we heeded the prevailing advice here and did not transfer money.

Oryx

Dodged a bullet op!

bobgaf

Hope so. Hope there is no fallout regarding the credit card as booking.com had those details.

Sam Mac

Wow, you are lucky you asked us here first, or else you could've been seriously out of pocket.

Oryx

bobgaf wrote: »

Hope so. Hope there is no fallout regarding the credit card as booking.com had those details.

Might be an idea to phone the cc company to get their advice on the situation.

I've been thinking about this whole thing. The one part of the ad that had my alarm bells ringing was the word elegant in the description. It just smacked of the kind of overblown 419 speak you get with scams!

bobgaf

Latest update :
South Kensington Elegant Apartments no longer listed on booking.com as opposed to being temporarily unavailable yesterday.
Hopefully this will be the final post. If there are any further developments, I'll update if I think they may be of interest. Not an experience I'd care to repeat but a lesson learned, I hope.

Virtudes

Bobgaf you are in lucky , I am Spanish and I do a reservation with Booking at South Kensington Elegant Apartment and it was a fraud. I did the reservation with the credit card and every thing was ok. After 10 day Booking wrote me an email my credit car was wrong , we try it again and happened the same , after that I explained the situation to Booking and that the owner said I must do a transfer and Booking told me that every thing is ok . Then I did it and after two days Booking sent me a mail on 20 of June and it said that my reservation is cancel it is a fraud.

Now I am trying to obtain my money from Booking. If someone can help me with some advise , please contact with me. And tell to yours friends and family to be care with Booking.com .

Sorry for my English , it no so good.

Sam Mac

Virtudes wrote: »

Bobgaf you are in lucky , I am Spanish and I do a reservation with Booking at South Kensington Elegant Apartment and it was a fraud. I did the reservation with the credit card and every thing was ok. After 10 day Booking wrote me an email my credit car was wrong , we try it again and happened the same , after that I explained the situation to Booking and that the owner said I must do a transfer and Booking told me that every thing is ok . Then I did it and after two days Booking sent me a mail on 20 of June and it said that my reservation is cancel it is a fraud.

Now I am trying to obtain my money from Booking. If someone can help me with some advise , please contact with me. And tell to yours friends and family to be care with Booking.com .

Sorry for my English , it no so good.

If you paid by bank transfer, your money is gone. My apologies.

bobgaf

Virtudes,
sorry to hear you were taken advantage of in this way. What happened in your case sounds pretty much what happened to us except we did not carry out the bank transfer. I would expect booking.com to refund your losses and I hope that happens.

00112984

There's a thread over on Tripadvisor about a similar situation to yours, OP. Lots of people have been stung.
http://www.tripadvisor.ie/ShowTopic-g186338-i17-k7549030-Anyone_have_any_experience_staying_at_14_Trevor_Place-London_England.html

Beano

bobgaf wrote: »

Virtudes,
sorry to hear you were taken advantage of in this way. What happened in your case sounds pretty much what happened to us except we did not carry out the bank transfer. I would expect booking.com to refund your losses and I hope that happens.

I wouldn't hold out any hope of booking.com refunding the money sent to a third party. They only facilitated the transaction. Their terms and conditions specifically say

Our website does not constitute and should not be regarded as a recommendation or endorsement of the quality, service level, qualification or (star) rating of any accommodations made available.

bobgaf

0112984, very interesting link there. Sums it all up.