We have always used Booking.com without complaint for years, however, this review is based on their endorsement of a fraudulent company by placing them on their website. The company is called SoBeNY/ trading as ‘Corphousing Group’ and the accommodation is ‘Boston West Accommodations’ in Massachusetts.
We booked 7 nights at this accommodation in Boston, via Booking.com and paid in full upon booking in January 2022.
Fast forward 5 months, we arrive in Boston and have our booking cancelled late afternoon, leaving us high and dry in an unfamiliar city (we are from the UK). SoBeNY and Booking.com both subsequently failed to engage, answer the phone or return messages.
Since this happened to us, we have researched the Corphousing Group and found that numerous people had the same experience and Booking.com failed to take any action or remove this scam from its website. Of course, you can only write a review if you actually stay at the venue, so beware that all you will see is positive reviews for Boston West Accommodations - you are not seeing anything from those who were scammed like us. The fact that Booking.com continue to endorse this company despite knowing the problems is disgraceful.
SoBeNY/ Corphousing Group will make you feel they are legitimate and are quick to respond to messages initially. For example, I was in contact right up until arriving in Boston 3 hours prior and they said they would send us all the details and looked forward to welcoming us.
As soon as we arrived at Boston and again asked for the apartment details, we received the following message from SoBeNY/ Corphousing Group via the Booking.com messaging portal:
“ Urgent Notification about your upcoming reservation-
Thank you for your interest in staying with us. SobeNY prides itself in providing the very best experience for each of our guests. Presently we are experiencing a problem with the property and/or listing you sought to book, and are unable to provide the experience we would have hoped to provide. We are in the midst of several software transitions to improve our guest's experience and are still working through the kinks. Unfortunately, we need to cancel your upcoming reservation. We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience.”
No refund has been received and we had to pay extortionate price to stay somewhere else at late notice. Booking.com have completely failed to respond to any messages.
If I had been a solo female traveller or a vulnerable person, this could have been an extremely dangerous situation.
BE AWARE - BOOKING.COM IS NOT A SAFE SITE TO USE EVEN IF YOU HAVE HAD NO PREVIOUS PROBLEMS.
Had Booking.com responded to my request for help with this situation, I would not have felt it necessary to bring them into the dispute with the frausters, SoBeNY/ Corphousing Group (or whatever other names they trade as).
