Magnus Tengvar skulle semestra in France and had booked accommodation for just under 25,000 kronor via Booking.com. This was not some ordinary hotel booking: it was an apartment hotel in Paris, and everything seemed to be systematic. The payment was quickly made, the address was confirmed, and the group was on its way by train from Bordeaux to Paris. Then the phone suddenly buzzed with bad news from the accommodation. Only hours before check-in, they cancelled the stay, with reference to water damage.
– It was stressful, but I quickly booked a new, somewhat more expensive place, so it went well. Then the apartment that cancelled said the cost would be refunded within seven days. But after a week, no money had appeared in the account, so I contacted Booking.com, says Magnus Tengvar.
What followed was a long sequence of messages and phone calls, in which Booking.com, in Tengvar’s own words, “delayed the refund” in various ways. Initially, the communication was polite, but since it didn’t lead anywhere, it quickly became exhausting. The booking site asked him to send the same information several times, and all that time the money stayed away.
– It was terrible. My impression is that Booking.com mediated accommodation from an unserious lessor and didn’t want to take responsibility for that, says Tengvar.
He thinks he has reason to be suspicious. When DN reached out to Booking.com’s communs department, the company wrote in an email that the entire hotel had been removed from the platform, because they had “identified indications of suspicious activity”. The warning came to Tengvar only after he had already returned from France and had to block his payment card to prevent any possible card fraud.
The case began with what is called ”offlinepayment”. Tengvar says that during his earlier bookings with Booking.com it happened from time to time that living facilities asked for payment through professional accounts or external payment service. In this case, the accommodation had directed him to a company named Home professional transfer, which, according to Tengvar, is a fairly common provider among French landlords. He never doubted that the company was legitimate, and he used the same payment method and the Swedish fintech actor Klarna when paying for the accommodation.
What happened next is not entirely clear, but the late refund was apparently the result of a mismatch between Booking.com and the accommodation. According to the company, the person behind the cancelled room had chosen to take payment directly from the customer, outside its own platform. “Since the accommodation took payment directly from you outside our platform, it was also the accommodation that had to handle refunds. We did contact the property to request refund but received no response, which subsequently contributed to the delay. We apologize for this,” Booking.com wrote in the mail to DN.
With his regular communication with Booking.com lacking, Tengvar finally chose to contact Klarna. To his surprise, the fintech company quickly refunded the entire amount. – Actually, it was not Klarna’s responsibility, but they made an exception and chose to help me, which was extremely kind of them, says Tengvar.
At that point, the amount 25,000 kroner had effectively been returned to him, and he informed Booking.com that no further payment was needed. But a week later, DN contacted Booking. Less than 24 hours after receiving the email, Booking said that they would pay out the whole amount again, this time as a cash credit to Tengvar’s account.
– They really got cold feet, perhaps, and so got payment relatively easily; I considered the matter closed then, he says.
For regular travellers, the incident is a reminder of how important it is to always pay through the large platform and not through other transfer services. Booking.com is one of the world’s largest travel intermediaries and appears frequently in such stories, especially when lessors choose to bypass its system. The company has market power, but that also means more alleys where scam can pass through. This is not unique to professional property owners.
Nor is this the first time that Travel industry has been criticized for being protection of consumers. Already outgoing payment methods, such as Klarna, has built its business on simplifying online purchases. If and when a travel platform rather takes money from a customer without fire protection, the financial institution can sometimes compensate instead. In these circumstances, Klarna was able to restore the refund with only a narrow pause. The often intangible ”rebate” from Klarna may have been decisive – not only because of sustained damages, but because legal loopholes don’t always catch up.
From Booking.com’s side, a payment picture is now clear: the company has cancelled the hotel from its platform, readdressed the refund, and the customer has not lost that the amount in question. But the situation from the start shows how important it is for consumers to read payment details carefully and to secure their purchase from direct cash flows.
