Hi, I recently booked an apartment for a weekend trip in Poland (through [booking.com](https://booking.com)), for which the owner had me pay a deposit, which he is now refusing to return. He sent a copy + paste email claiming that I caused damage which just happens to be as much as the deposit. He didn’t even bother filling in the blanks, so it just says \[date of booking\] etc. Obviously no proof, nothing. The icing on top is that he’s offering to pay back about half of the deposit in exchange for a perfect review.
I’ve reported this to [booking.com](https://booking.com), but this guy has also listed his apartment on a billion other smaller websites. Given that he has a standard message to copy + paste, I assume he pulls this scam regularly. My question is, is there some official place I can report this to? The deposit is way too small to sue over, and police obviously don’t care since this is a civil matter, but it’d suck to just let him continue his scam.
by BottleAged
2 comments
Perhaps you could contact your bank on how to report a scam? They’re usually much more efficient than any government institution when it comes to minor things. Especially if you paid by card. If it was in cash, it’s a long and troublesome road, might be not worth to fight. Still worth to report to the police, they get invested in those cases only if the number of people scammed/amount of money is high
Report to wiih (wojewódzki inspektorat inspekcji handlowej)
You’ll most likely get the money back after they inspect, and it’ll surely be unpleasent for the owner.