{"id":142478,"date":"2025-10-24T10:06:24","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T10:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/142478\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T10:06:24","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T10:06:24","slug":"scam-victims-forced-to-report-fraud-to-chatbots-as-major-holiday-booking-site-replaces-customer-service-staff-with-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/142478\/","title":{"rendered":"Scam victims forced to report fraud to chatbots as major holiday booking site replaces customer service staff with AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Booking.com has replaced its customer service staff with artificial intelligence (AI<\/a>),\u00a0meaning scam victims are now forced to report fraud experiences to a chatbot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last year, the hotel booking site announced plans to slash staff numbers and let AI take over large parts of its customer service.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Following that, according to the makers of a Belgian consumer affairs programme, WinWin, some staff at Booking.com complained about falling standards of customer service.\u00a0<\/p>\n

WinWin claimed that Booking.com had first outsourced customer service to a third-party company based in Luxembourg and was now cutting several hundred people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It appears that Booking.com\u2019s plan is for most standard questions to initially be answered by AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But consumer group Which<\/a>?<\/a>\u00a0has claimed it receives weekly reports from customers of the hotel giant, who say they\u2019ve been scammed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One holidaymaker revealed she was defrauded out of \u20ac2,025 (\u00a31,759) by an alarmingly convincing scam on Booking.com.<\/p>\n

She called the booking site’s helpline and\u00a0was answered by an American voice, calling itself \u2018Kayleigh, your AI-powered agent\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"One <\/p>\n

One holidaymaker revealed that she was defrauded out of \u20ac2,025 (\u00a31,759.83) by an alarmingly convincing scam on Booking.com (stock image)<\/p>\n

She\u00a0tried explaining the complicated fraud, but got nowhere.<\/p>\n

\u2018I went round and round in circles,\u2019 she said.\u00a0\u2018Having stated that I believed I was subject to a scam and there was a fraudulent listing on their website, the bot suggested I report the listing through the website or app.\u2019<\/p>\n

Weeks after she reported the fraud, she still hadn\u2019t received any further news on what was happening with her case.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an experience that will be familiar to the many people who have been defrauded on the site.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She had initially\u00a0attempted to book a Swiss chalet on the site but received a message saying her booking had been declined.\u00a0Shortly afterwards, she received another message, again from Booking.com\u2019s own email address, telling her to \u2018please contact the host for availability\u2019.<\/p>\n

She was then sent a link to pay. It was only when she compared the photos that she\u2019d been sent with the real chalet that she became suspicious.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She contacted her bank but found out that, as it was an international payment, she would not benefit from new rules around so-called authorised push payments.<\/p>\n

Her case was complicated by the fact that, unlike with other similar scams, she doesn\u2019t have a booking reference.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"It <\/p>\n

It appears that Booking.com\u2019s plan is for most standard questions to initially be answered by AI<\/p>\n

The fraudsters got her email address by hacking Booking.com\u2019s mailing system – presumably via the chalet she emailed – and were able to direct her outside of the platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unsurprising that she – and many other people – have been tricked because some genuine Booking.com properties do request payment outside of the platform itself, unlike those on Airbnb, Expedia or other sites.<\/p>\n

In August, Which? reported that almost one in 10 Booking.com customers said they\u2019d seen scam emails.<\/p>\n

Which? urges holidaymakers using Booking.com to be careful when using the site, as their survey found\u00a0the Booking.com messaging system is frequently hacked.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is because it allows accommodation partners – hotels or others – to access it directly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fraudsters only need to hack individual hotels or other third parties with access to the messaging system to be able to contact all their guests via the Booking.com app or the noreply@booking.com email address.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Booking.com spokesperson said: ‘Ensuring that our customers receive a great level of service throughout their trip is a top priority, and out of the millions of transactions we facilitate on our platform every day, the vast majority of customers do not experience any issues.<\/p>\n

‘We continually invest in Customer Services technology, including in Gen AI tools, to make it easier and quicker for customers to get in touch and for us to help with a resolution – especially if an issue occurs during a trip when we want to make sure that we can help find a solution as soon as possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Which? <\/p>\n

Which? advises users of Booking.com to be careful when using the site, as their survey found the Booking.com messaging system is frequently hacked<\/p>\n

‘However we would like to clarify that AI technology is not replacing our CS agents and we continue to have dedicated teams available 24\/7 and across 45 different languages.<\/p>\n

‘We are committed to protecting our customers against fraud and scams, which is unfortunately a battle many industries are facing, however we have robust security measures we have in place and thanks to our continuous efforts to enhance them, we are able to detect and block the vast majority of fraudulent activity.<\/p>\n

‘Should a customer have any concern about a payment message, we ask them to carefully check the payment policy details on their booking confirmation to be sure that the message is legitimate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘When in doubt, it\u2019s always best to contact our customer service team or click on “report an issue” which is included in the chat function. It is important to note that we would never ask a customer to share payment information via email, chat messages, text messages or phone.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Booking.com has replaced its customer service staff with artificial intelligence (AI),\u00a0meaning scam victims are now forced to report…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,290,118,18,19,17,82,4319],"class_list":{"0":"post-142478","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-dailymail","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-technology","16":"tag-travel"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115428588769734371","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}