What was supposed to be an adventure immediately turned into a nightmare. Having left for a three-month study trip to Montreal in Canada, a 32-year-old Swiss woman had a very unpleasant surprise when she arrived there on Easter weekend. The accommodation she had booked via the Booking.com platform, for 4,300 euros all the same, was in a deplorable state: the sofa was dirty, the kitchen was filthy and the entire apartment smelled strongly of gas. The icing on the cake was that the sheets and pillows were surrounded by whitish stains, which the Swiss woman believes to be sperm.
Without delay, she tried multiple times to contact the owner and Booking.com. No one answered him, let alone offered a solution. Eight hours later, tired of fighting, she ended up renting a room on Airbnb. If, from then on, her stay took a less unpleasant turn, the Swiss was not at the end of her troubles. His attempts to obtain a refund of the 4,300 euros already paid remained unsuccessful.
Disgusted, literally and figuratively, she asked the RTL show “Urlaubsretter” (Holiday Rescuers) for help. Booking.com then offered her a partial refund of 2,072 euros which only partially convinced the Swiss who felt, despite everything, abandoned to her unenviable fate by the platform.
The latter assures that it will continue its investigation into this matter, so that such a situation does not happen again. As for the Swiss woman, she filed a complaint with the Canadian courts against the owner of the accommodation.
