Fv4006 Apartments

How many times have you checked into a hotel room or hotel apartment for an overnight night, or a few days stay, you book it through booking.com for example get to the location and you asked unexpectedly for a sizeable deposit of between 100 or 800 dollars in addition to the room payment.

The deposit is always never mentioned at the booking stage.

Sometimes there is no room service or restaurant on the site or at the location etc., so there is really no justification for that size of a deposit.

You are told we are only putting a hold on it; it won't be taken out of your account and will be refunded 7 days after you have left.

You are also told it is for any damage done to the room or apartment, no one ever says anything about the room needing to be returned spanking clean or just clean to get your deposit back.

No one is ever told if you mistakenly spill anything and if the cleaner mops the floor twice to get it clean, then your deposit is at risk or go with no warning or notice.

Anyhow, how many times have you gone back to your bank account after 7 days and checked if the hold on the deposit has been released?

In over 20 years of traveling very frequently, I had never checked either, I always thought it was refunded automatically.

Anyway, this time I decided to, not only to check but also call the bank, the money that was previously on hold status had now been debited from the account, no warning, no message, no communication, no email, no nothing.

So, I called FV4006 Apartments Fortitude Valley Accommodation, and I was told yes, we did all the above and I asked if this is not fraudulent, then what is it?

At this point the lady at the end of the other line dropped the phone on me, then a text message followed offering to pay my deposit back but with a threat that I won't be allowed back.

Using false prentices to obtain funds from a customer and not informing them that you will now be debiting their account instead of removing the hold has to class as fraud, you be the judge, what do you think?

Going forward I will now be checking that any deposits I put down are refunded as was promised, I suggest you do the same.

I really wonder how much money we customers have wasted due to this scam.

I would like Booking.com to respond to what has happened here and to the fact that there is no upfront information from them about deposits at the point of booking.

I tried to put this review up on Booking.com but the review function comes up with an error when you click submit.