Guest credit card validation
Bookings received via Booking.com does not guarantee credit card validity.
The Booking.com system is not verifying these.
This means that fraud can easily be set up by fake guests and the properties cannot claim any payment in case of no show.
We had a long discussion with them. They push away all responsibility.
However, since Booking.com substitutes herself to the owners/properties by accepting bookings automatically, they should be responsible to check credit card validity. Their position by booking is unacceptable: once the booking is pushed through to the property, checks become very difficult.
Checking credit cards can easily be set up centrally by the Booking.com systems.
Booking.com argues properties should only work with pre-payed bookings. This is a false argument: pre-payed booking are commercially totally different and can only be applied in certain cases, like in combination with pre-payed special rates.
Booking.com vous remercie de votre collaboration.
Nous vous contactons au sujet de la réservation n° *** pour le client Laura Dgrse, arrivée le 2019-03-03 et départ le 2019-03-04.
En ce qui concerne votre question, j'ai malheureusement la même réponse que celle de mon collègue. Booking.com ne vérifie pas la validité de la carte si le paimenet est géré par Booking.com. Pour remédier à ce problème, je propose de vérifier la validité à chaque fois que vous recevez une réservation, car vous aurez la possibilité d’annuler la réservation.
Nous vous remercions à l’avance pour votre coopération.
Cordialement,
--
***
Booking.com Customer Service Team
Click the following link for the Customer Service phone number in your country
http://www.booking.com/general.html?tmpl=docs/customer_service;trprm=cucalnk
You know what's funny about this?
You can take out your full competition with making long term bookings on all their rooms with a credit card that has absolutely no funds. Just make it for the future so you cannot be charged on the card, because pre-authorization is only possible 30 days of check-in time.
With this, you can actually cripple the local availability, because Booking.com allows this to happen, cause they have absolutely no failsafe for such a situation.
And you can prove this by doing it yourself so they can see how *** their whole system is.
Something like this should NOT be possible to do, because it's irresponsible and on the other hand, they don't let you cancel such a thing, because Hey! It's a guaranteed booking!
Well, hope they'll understand when someone will screw them over with a potential situation that I've mentioned. Which was pulled on my property once, but I really don't care about the 30 day period, I'd rather pay a charge-back than have my calendar blocked and miss a month of business.
Just, think about this.
Warm regards,
Zsolt - www.thuild.com
Interesting feedback.
They have an issue, for sure.
I guess we are not the only ones to who questionned them on this.
Interesting to note I received next message from Booking, 2 days after having contacted them and posting this comment: "Status of invalid credit cards".
It seems as if they ran a check module over my bookings, which would mean they have such a module. We definitely need to follow-up and to reach as many users as possible.
The issue with credit card validité becomes even much bigger.
We had a new case of a booking accepted by Booking.com and pushed through the system without any verification of the credit card. (we reminded booking.com that since they substitute them for the proporties in accepting booking on our name, credit card checks should be done at booking acceptance level).
After asking the guest to provide a new card number, the guest did and Booking.com sent us a message saying they checked this card and that "according thier check, this card seemed OK". We checked again and abgain the card was not valid.
I think we should all react and ask Booking to take responsability.
I know they are aware of this issue.
We validate cards via our channel manager. They charge guests cards for us as well.
https://effectivetours.com/docs/how-to-verify-booking-com-guests-card-details-to-avoid-financial-loss-for-small-bb-and-apartments/