Booking.com complaint: Misrepresentation using photos of the apartment’s look, feel and ambience

The photos of this apartment on the Booking.com website do not give an accurate reflection of the apartment’s surroundings. The apartment is, in fact, located on top of a butcher shop and is adjacent to an extremely busy three-way intersection on the main route into town, which makes it very noisy. The constant high volume of traffic means that there is a horrible smell of exhaust fumes hanging in the air. In addition, numerous aircon units (or butcher’s refrigeration? units) are located on the wall below the jacuzzi area, adding another layer of unsettling and unpleasant noise. In contrast to the claimed ‘excellent location’ this location clearly isn’t the main area of town where any tourists would reside, but a side suburb occupied by local residents and various busy local stores such as butcher, grocery and hardware stores. To us, this all indicated a low-end, non-tourist area of town, felt very much by our whole family upon arrival and as captured by my own photographs.
In addition, the outside views shown on the website does not reflect the fact that the private terrace area has absolutely no privacy. It is, in fact, overlooked more than 180 degrees of apartments and buildings. The low level of the apartment made the terrace visible to multiple floors of numerous other buildings. It is not private and totally unsuitable to venture out whilst in swimwear to relax and sit out on. It truly feels like a fishbowl overlooked by all.
Complaint 2 – Covert (secret) recording of conversation, which constitutes a breach of privacy and trust.
After our arrival at the apartment and meeting the owner, we had a look around and following our overview of the apartment and surroundings I immediately informed him that we didn’t quite believe that the apartment had met our expectations, nor had it been accurately represented on Booking.com. I indicated that, at most, we would possibly stay the evening as it was already quite late, around 7pm and we would be taking up the matter with Booking.com. The owner left at this stage. After further consideration, my wife and I agreed that our family would not feel comfortable staying at this apartment and we decided to start looking for alternative accommodation. I then contacted the owner, asking him to return to the property to see how we could resolve the matter. At this point, he replied stating that he was busy with other matters and could only return in the next hour. Within a couple of minutes, I received a notification from my bank account informing me that the full payment had been taken out of my bank account. I was surprised as, at this stage, I was still willing to come up with an equitable solution for both parties.
After some time, the owner arrived back at the property. I asked him about taking the payment and he ed that he had, and that we must pay him the full accommodation price even if we were not satisfied as we cannot just cancel at this stage. I did ask him if it would be possible to agree to pay for a few days as compensation and then just find somewhere else to stay, again he refused. It was at this stage that I noticed he was secretly recording our conversation on his mobile device. I questioned him immediately about this and asked him why he was doing this without my knowledge. He said he would delete it although, of course, I cannot be completely 100% sure. We found this action very upsetting and unsettling; it was very underhand behaviour and it made us feel very unsafe. You will also notice in the Booking.com online messages that after this incident the owner then accused me of blackmail. I find this completely out of line and unacceptable.
As customers, we gave our truthful opinion of the apartment. He is the host and service provider of a property which has been validated by Booking.com, and we were the guests that had just paid him a top-end fee of £2170 (7 nights). The fact that we did not agree that what was presented matched the very high price was within our remit to say. The owner made the situation untenable with his petulant actions and attitude, we were horrified to be treated in this way. Futhermore, when he left, he slammed the door and stormed off. My whole family were very unsettled at this point, we immediately vacated the property and contacted him to let him know that the keys were securely stored in the flat.
We found the owner’s manner and actions wholly unsatisfactory, unprofessional, and we would expect that a code of conduct for hosts within Booking.com should guide these vendors, no matter the scale of accommodation so that guests are protected in scenarios like this.
By this time, it was quite late and we had to search for new accommodation which put us in a very difficult and precarious scenario. We were literally left on the street.

I have in vein tried to raise this with Booking.co via their complaints route, besides a few repeated scripted we apologise emails back , they have been no help at all and now dont bother responding any more. They have not answered a single query or tried to even resolve. In addition despite the fact that I paid they full price I’m now not even able to leave a review to safe any other customers from thsi.