A Brit who went on holiday to Thailand ended up getting a nasty shock when he got there as it turned out that the hotel he'd booked didn't actually exist.
Glen Parke had forked over £282 for a total of 59 nights at a hotel advertised on Booking.com as a 'one-bedroom house', called Lek Lek Residence.
He'd booked the place a year in advance to prepare for his trip to Thailand.
Only when the 30-year-old got to where he thought he'd be staying there, it was instead just a small shop by the roadside and and he could find no trace of this supposed hotel he'd booked.
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Now on the other side of the world and with no place to stay, Glen then paid £3,044 for a second hotel only to be told that place was also fully booked and there was no room for him.
He finally found a third hotel which did have room for him and that one cost £3,579 for the span of his stay.
"For the whole trip I expected to spend two or three grand but within the first two nights I'm spending £7,000," Glen said.
"I was trying and trying to get my money back for months. The first couple of days I wanted to go home. I'd had enough. Getting the money back from the invoice for the third hotel was a real palaver."
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He also claimed that Booking.com had promised him by way of apology for the first hotel they'd advertised not actually existing.
"I'd been on the phone with Booking.com all week and had been told there was no complaints department." Glen said.
"They told me to send a bank statement with the payment for the hotel and told me to call them back and they'd refund me on the phone.
"I did that and called them back and they said they couldn't do anything with it and they don't know who authorised that decision.
"The trip was good other than the fact that I was thousands of pounds down than what I expected to be."
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Glen, who arrived in Thailand on New Year's Day, has at last got his money back as Booking.com had paid for the first and second hotels and then refunded the 30-year-old for the third one on 18 April.
When he'd told Booking.com that the hotel he'd booked with them wasn't real, they'd offered him another one in his price range, but he turned it down on account of it being on an island a 50 minute boat journey away.
They then told him he could find a place to stay up to the cost of £3,196.89, according to an email, but hotel number two had no room and the third one was above the price range the company had offered him.
Having 57 more days to spend in Thailand and needing a place to live for the duration, he decided to go for the one above the price range and cover the difference.
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He also claimed that he didn't get his refund for the third hotel until Booking.com were approached for comment and said 'they moved the goalposts about' as the hotel had been booked through Glen's brother among other things.
The Brit said: "This initial problem with the invoice was 'no balance shown', then it needed a price break down, then it needed to show the number of guests, then it became an issue about it being in my name, then they promised to solve it if I sent a statement that correlated with the invoice, so I did."
A spokesperson for Booking.com said: "We’re sorry to hear of the issues that this customer encountered with his recent reservations.
"Having investigated, we can see that we did not handle the refund of the alternative accommodation booked as swiftly as we would have liked.
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"As this is clearly not the sort of experience that we want for anyone using our site, we have refunded the customer in full and apologise for the inconvenience.
"Ensuring that our platform is safe, secure and trustworthy for our customers and partners is our top priority, and every week, we facilitate millions of stays with the vast majority taking place with absolutely no problems.
"We are constantly optimising the robust security measures we have in place to protect them, and take the process of verifying accommodation listings extremely seriously, including checks performed by our security, local partner services and customer service teams and issues with accommodations occur very rarely."
Joe Harker