Booking.com Genius program and a non-existing customer service.

I have been a loyal customer of booking.com for several years. More than half a decade, to be precise. As such, I had a "Genius" account. "Genius" account is the booking.com terminology for a frequent traveler. You get 10% - 15% off on many properties with a "Genius" status. One day, suddenly, my "Genius" status was revoked with a message.

Your Genius membership has been temporarily suspended

We noticed that you've booked with an invalid credit card or made an unauthorized credit card recharge for a booking that should have been charged/was subject to cancellation fees. While we understand that sometimes these things happen unintentionally, we want to make sure that our accommodation partners are being treated fairly. For now, we've suspended your Genius status. You can still book with us but your status will only be reinstated after your next completed booking. After you've booked, stayed and paid you will automatically be added back to the program and you can continue to enjoy your discount and travel rewards. See Terms & Conditions 

Now, I have never done any of these. Those are wrong accusations. I have been using my booking.com account for like 7 years. This is not a throw-away account to make a booking and then disappear without paying the hotel. I would never do that anyway.

On the other hand, these days, I have several travels planned. Having booking.com "Genius" status revoked at this point will make me pay an additional 15% of my upcoming booking, compared to what I was going to pay with a Genius status.

Naturally, I sent them a private message on Twitter and also asked them in Tweet to look into the private message.

"Hi, My http://booking.com profile is XXXXXXX. My genius status is canceled with the below message: 

[INSERT THE MESSAGE SHOWN BY BOOKING.COM REGARDING MY GENIUS STATUS]

I never booked with an invalid card or did a credit card dispute on any ofhttp://booking.com bookings. In fact, I am a happy customer for several years. This must be a technical glitch. If you let me know which booking had this issue, I will be able to pin-point what went wrong.

I really want to rectify and keep my genius status as always."

72 hours passed. They were answering to everyone else - but not me. Not even an acknowledgment that they received my tweet or are looking into this. Not even an automated or a canned reply that I would receive from my insurance company. They even replied to those who complained a day or two later than me.

So I used their "Contact us" page in their site. After typing all these, I figured, they are not even receiving what I typed. Instead, the "Next" link sent me to a static page that states,

"Get in touch Our Customer Service agents are always happy to help with any questions you have. Call Customer Service."

"You can also call us

If you have a booking with us, you can speed up your call by having your confirmation number and PIN code handy.

 United States of America

Support in English

1 (888) 850 3958

Support in Spanish

1 (866) 938 1297

International (English):

+44 20 3320 2609

The phone numbers above are for in-country calls. Only local charges apply, except for international numbers."

So I called them using the number they have listed.

The call replied with an automated message,

"Due to the large volume of calls, we only assist those who have their confirmation number and PIN code ready" and went on to ask those. 

A mail to customer.service@booking.com left me with an automated reply email:
"

Thanks for your message , Please reply to this email in the format below, with the confirmation number and PIN code for the booking you need help with. This will help us to resolve your query faster. Confirmation number: XXXXXXXXXX (10 digits) PIN code: XXXX (4 digits) You can find these details at the top of your confirmation email, or by logging in to your account. My query is not for an existing booking Don’t want to wait? It’s easy to solve most booking queries with our self-service tools:

"




So those with general account-wise problems such as me have no way of getting help from booking.com. Not Twitter, not from their support page, and not even from their call center via phone.Booking.com is definitely understaffed for such a large-scale booking company. I feel betrayed as a loyal customer. This is probably a technical glitch. But they must rectify it as soon as possible. This issue is otherwise making me pay more for my upcoming travel bookings. When everything goes fine, we don't see the negative aspects of a company. Only when something goes wrong, we start to see them. Time to look for alternatives after sticking with them for a decade. 



Update: Today, after 5 days, I received a reply from booking.com on Twitter.


"Hi there Pradeeban. Thanks for your message. There might have also been something else related to your booking history which prompted the Genius level suspension. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with a different outcome other than the one already given."


Interesting. If they are really honest with "accommodation partners are being treated fairly", they should let me know which booking had issues - so I can rectify. That way, their (imaginary) accommodation partner also can have a better outcome. I am sure this is just a technical glitch, and booking.com is pathetic in their customer service. They are just lazy to find and rectify what went wrong. What a complete lack of customer service when something goes bad?

Most of the web applications are developed to be user-friendly, scalable, and high-performing, with an end-goal of high revenue. But when things go wrong, the humans - the agents of the company come to play. Humans are the weakest link in any technology. Train your staff well to handle the corner cases. When you ignore the valid concerns of someone who is met with an issue in your web application, you lose their trust. That's how many flight agents and booking sites such as booking.com managed to get terrible reviews in review sites such as Trustpilot. To get some idea, check how booking.com managed to get only 1.5* review, at the time of writing this post.


Update [Oct 22nd]: During the past 2 weeks, I stayed in 3 hotels booked through booking.com and completed the payment directly at the hotels. Yet, my Genius status hasn't been restored yet. Shady indeed!

@bookingcom, the worst social media and customer support team. When everything goes fine, it is good. But the moment something goes wrong, you will meet their irresponsible and incapable support team. Time to book accommodation directly with the hotels, ditching these middlemen.

Update [Oct 24th]: Booking.com replied on Twitter, indicating they have restored my Genius Level-2. But turned out, I am just in Level-1 now. They were unavailable for further discussion. Interestingly, to achieve Level-1, I just need 2 completed stays in 2 years. And Level-2,  just 5 stays. With already 3 bookings/stays completed, I would have earned level-1 even if I started from scratch. Similarly, with 2 more stays, I would reach level-2 on my own.

Update [Oct 25th]: Finally, my Level-2 status is restored, and I received an email from Booking.com, confirming this, interestingly in Swedish (Maybe I created my account in Swedish):

(Translated: You are now on Level 2 in our loyalty program Genius! )

Du är nu på Nivå 2 i vårt lojalitetsprogram Genius!

Hej Pradeeban! Du har genomfört 5 vistelser som bokats via Booking.com. Det betyder att du är på Genius Nivå 2. Du får nu tillgång till ännu fler exklusiva reseförmåner med ditt Booking.com-konto, samtidigt som du behåller alla förmåner som du fick på Genius Nivå 1.

Vi vill belöna våra kunder med Genius-medlemskap. Det är vårt sätt att tacka dig för att du bokar med oss.

Reseförmåner med Genius Nivå 2:

• Rabatter på  % och  % på utvalda boenden
• Gratis frukost på utvalda boenden
• Gratis uppgradering på vissa alternativ
  
  

  Dina genomförda bokningar:
  XXX Porto	25 jun 2013 - 27 jun 2013
  XXX Lissabon	23 okt 2013 - 28 okt 2013
  XXX Helsingfors	22 dec 2013 - 25 dec 2013
  XXX Köpenhamn	26 dec 2013 - 29 dec 2013
  XXX Lissabon	15 sep 2014 - 19 sep 2014

  
  
  
  
  Note that all the bookings are from 2013 - 2014 (I removed the hotel names for privacy reasons). Of course I had later bookings. These are my earliest. My first stay with booking.com was in Porto in 2013 summer. It was also my first personal trip since I left Sri Lanka. I deserved to be in Level-2 since 5 years ago. ;) 
   
  Interestingly, I never received such email in the first place when I reached Level-2 in the first place. This whole episode (and the way booking.com handled this) is plain weird and made me lose my trust and confidence in booking.com. I may still use them. But I won't actively promote them or recommend them to anyone.

Is Vayama a scam?

Vayama FAQ on Coupons

Unfortunately, online travel agent websites are filled with so many scams. Most of the sites that you would find in well-known listing sites such as Skyscanner do not fit into the traditional definition of a scam. Therefore, they easily evade any lawsuits. Their terms and conditions are listed in fine-print, if you manage to read them when you purchase the flight ticket before the page times out in a few minutes.

Vayama is one of those shady predatory sites that you must avoid, if at all possible. If you must use them, especially if you have found the cheapest of the flight, make sure not to buy any of the add-ons. They promised a 40$ discount coupon for my next flight purchase when I purchased their premium package for my previous flight for 26$. I always land on Vayama from Skyscanner. But when I try to use my discount code, there was no way to input it. 

I contacted them  after purchasing the ticket, as their FAQ page seems to suggest that: "If your booking is not older than 2 days and if it meets the conditions, we can still add the discount code to your booking."

Their India-based support team replied to my complain. Their only repeated reply was "Your flight purchase is ineligible for this discount code since you landed in our web site through Skyscanner." Their logic, I must land on their site directly to be able to use their coupon code. Not through Skyscanner, Google, Kayak, or any other listing or search engines. Seriously? There was no mention of that when promoting their 26$ garbage package.

The only mention is in FAQ, which is no way linked to that terms and conditions listed for the 26$ premium package. The FAQ mentions:

"- Make a purchase directly on our website, not through one of our partners' website"

I and many others who complain on the same situation. Vayama using Skyscanner as an excuse not to provide the discount that we PURCHASED! Even Skyscanner got involved as a courtesy. Skyscanner sent me the below email with their reply:

--------------------------------------------
 Hi again Pradeeban,

I hope you are well.

I have received a reply from Vayama group and they said they will make it clearer in their terms and conditions that the discount can only be applied when the search and the booking are both made on their website directly.

I'm sorry about this issue and that I wasn't able to help.

If there anything we can do or you have concerns  - please let me know, Pradeeban.
--------------------------------------------

Vayama is such a shady business. Please also read some other serious allegations against Vayama here. If they at least fix their wording on their page that sells their discount coupons, customers won't be deceived to purchase the 26$ package, hoping to get a 40$ discount in the next purchase. Hope they will stick to their promise and make these conditions clearer.

Verdict: Avoid this shady travel website.

Are Vayama.com discount vouchers a scam?

So I bought the 26$ voucher on my previous Vayama booking that would qualify me a 40$ discount on my next booking. But guess what? My next booking did not receive the discount. When I asked why, their reply was:

"Dear Pradeeban,
I have noticed you made your booking on skyscannerus This means your booking has not been made directly on our website and therefore the code cannot be redeemed. To redeem the discount, you have to book directly on our website.

To use the discount code, you must meet the following conditions:

- Book directly on our website, not on a different website.

- Check if all spaces are deleted at the beginning and at the end of the code

- Don't return to the previous page after entering the code

- Check if you haven't mixed up 0 (the number) and O (the letter)

- Check the validity of the code. The code is valid for 1 year from your booking date.

- Use the same email address as during booking

- Valid on flights only"

I replied back:

"Hi,

I find it strange. Skyscanner is just a listing site. I still made the booking through your website, except landing on your site through Skyscanner.

I believe my booking qualifies for the 40$ discount. Could you please double check?"

Of course, no positive reply!

Later I found that they are using this 40$ discount code as a way to scam money out of people. Specifically, those who land on their site through Skyscanner.com and similar listing sites. I am not alone!

Hearing my story on Twitter, Skyscanner interacted with Vayama to see what is going on. Vayama apparently gave the Skyscanner representative the same reply as he did to me!

In short, avoid this misleading 40$ discount on your next trip in Vayama.com for 26$. It is a trap. You will never be able to redeem it. Basically, avoid Vayama.com additional services at all, if you must use Vayama. Their customer service is non-existing.

Is Trip.com a scam?

Trip.com is a weird company. 

You will be charged instantly for the full flight price. But you will receive your ticket only 168 hours before the flight, "as this is a special fare" (Hint: No, it is not). They may also decline your ticket and refund the price you paid at the last moment (i.e., 168 hours before the departure). By then, the flight prices would have high-rocketed. Of course, these are in the fine print when you buy the tickets. But who reads them anyway? Probably a way to oversell their tickets.

I received my ticket in a few hours. But I won't use this site again to maintain peace of mind.

Is freelancer.com legit or scam?

It is 5.5 years since I reviewed Freelancer.com in my blog post "Is Freelancer.com a scam?". The post remained my most viewed blog post with 200+ comments for quite a long time. Most of the comments are from the users who agree that Freelancer.com is indeed a scam site. I can understand that they found my blog post by doing a quick Google search on "Freelancer.com scam." However, what is more interesting, some readers actually defended Freelancer.com. Interestingly, some of them did not really look genuine (why would you search and land on a blog post discussing whether freelancer.com is a scam unless you were searching for it?) But that it is just a guess. I also noticed canned comments from Freelancer.com employees (most likely bots), suggesting the concerned users to email their support team.

There have been alternatives popping up every once in a while. For example, the HubStaff. However, I am not really comfortable with recommending any of these. As in the past, the ones that many of us suggested as better alternatives to Freelancer.com were later acquired by Freelancer.com anyway. So the new ones can come to the same fate, or they themselves can turn into large evil corporations.

Apart from the issues of landing with a scam employer or a scam employee, Freelancer.com itself is a heavily unethical platform. By searching around the Internet (for example, read Freelancer.com is destroying my life), or reading the tens of comments in my previous blog post on Freelancer.com, you can get a taste of it. Most of the blame on the platform comes from its unethical way of charging. One particular case even I encountered was, the employee is charged the Freelancer.com 10% fees (which can be as high as 100$, if the project is 1000$) even if the employer turns out to be just a scammer. Since the employee did not get any benefit of the platform, any ethical organization would just refund the money. Other obvious issues are lower transaction rates, even lower than your banks, and the painfully long time they take to transfer your money! Transferwise does it at least 10 times faster! That is one ethical company. Freelancer.com on the other hand, an unethical bullying company. The most inhumane characteristics of Freelancer.com is when they randomly choose to block your account and ask for random verifications (as reported by commenters, sometimes driver's licenses are not accepted despite being listed as an accepted form of verification in the Freelancer.com itself).

If you must use sites such as Freelancer.com, try to work from a cheaper third-world country such as Bangladesh or Thailand. Not from Liechtenstein. Because you are not going to get paid higher just because you live in a more expensive or more developed country. 

Moreover, you real-world credentials do not really matter in the Internet world. It is hard to verify on the Internet whether you are who you claim to be. So even if you are an expert, you still have to build your online empire from ground-zero. Start this when you do not really need money, as a past-time. Working on Freelancing websites is not going to give you money quick unless you already have an account with justified success. The early days will be plainly painful as you put in work to a negligible payment (since your competitors are from cheaper countries anyway). 

There are of course many success stories. Many were just lucky or from the third-world countries with a competitive advantage on such global platforms. For example, 5$/hour is high in many South or South East Asian countries, while it is very little for most of the western countries. Others had the patience and time to build their profile slowly, till they can reach the 40 - 50$ hourly rate.

My verdict: Find a real job in the real world if possible. Want to be self-employed? Find local employers and build up a brand, so that you can find clients without greedy middlemen such as Freelancer.com. Freelancer.com is not entirely a scam. But it operates in a gray area with shady business practice (non-existing customer service paired with questionable antics to extract more money from the clients/users), acquiring competitors aiming to operate in a near-monopoly.

My experience with flight reservation sites

Flight price comparison with Skyscanner

Let me summarize my experience with various flight companies based on my 6 years of travels. Always compare your flight prices with Skyscanner, and book by following the link. Skyscanner does not charge any fees for its service, nor it places cookies on behalf of the travel agent sites.

1. TravelGenio / Travel2Be - Managed by the same team. The worst of all. Read my post on my experience with them - Is TravelGenio a Scam?

Score: 0/5

 2. Tripsta

They are the best of all that I tried.  They do not randomly increase the price or seek additional charges.

However, like all the other travel agents, they also apply a price differentiation. As I prefer my flight details to be in English and in Euro, I had a habit of using their Ireland website, tripsta.ie. However, for the same flight, it costs 507 Euro in tripsta.pt and 541 Euro in tripsta.ie. Next time, I will stick with tripsta.pt, though I need to stick to the Portuguese language, as I cannot change the language to English while in Portuguese site. Only Portuguese language is available in tripsta.pt. I can, of course, use Chrome to auto-translate, just to be safe.

Score: 5/5

3. GotoGate

They are fine. However, I did not like the site as much as I liked Tripsta - which was simple and plain.

Score: 4/5

4. MyTrip

Haven't tried yet.
Score: ?/5

5. eDreams

Used them a few times, as they were the first to offer an easy payment with PayPal with 0 additional fees. The situation has changed now. They once sent a notice mentioning "Your card has been declined" when I actually paid using PayPal and when the payment was indeed successful. I had to call them and clarify. It was a smooth process, and the email was a mistake. They fixed it and sent another confirmation email promptly as I asked them over the phone - just to be safe.

Score: 4/5

6. Rumbo

Haven't tried yet.
Score: ?/5

7. BudgetAir

Offered 15 Euro discount, if you pay additional 8 Euro during a previous flight. I did not prompt for this, as I was not sure whether I will use them again. However, overall pleasant experience booking with them. No additional charge and no random fees. Also offers cheapest for many flights.

Score: 5/5

8. TopAtlantico

A local Portuguese option. Has many branches everywhere in Lisboa.

Haven't tried yet. 

Score: ?/5

9. Abreu

A local Portuguese option. Has many branches everywhere in Portugal. Price is a bit high. However, it gives you the sense of security if you must buy from an agent. Recommend if you live in Portugal. You can visit them to buy the ticket.

Score: 5/5

10. Geostar

Another Portuguese option. Too expensive. 

Score: 2/5.

11. Kiwi.com

Too expensive. Is this a joke?

Score: 1/5.

12. Trip.com

Notorious for offering tickets only 168 hours before the flight, even if you buy the tickets 3 months in advance and pay the full price. They even cancel the flight ticket by the 168-hour deadline and offer you a refund. But by then the ticket prices would have high-rocketed, and therefore your travel plan is basically ruined. Read my post on my experience with them - Is Trip.com a scam?

Score: 0/5.

13. Your local travel agent

For the same flight, we paid 560 Euro from our travel agent (original price: 565 Euro; with discount - 560 Euro). 8 Euro more than Abreu. However, local travel agents are experienced to find you the best options from/to their base country - after all, this is their expertise.

Score: 3/5

14. Direct booking from TAP

Offers easy payment options as long as you have a Portuguese bank account - through ATM or online banking. Unless the flight is a TAP flight, the price will be very high. Even for the TAP flight, this may not be the cheapest option. However, you can pay within 24 hours. This gives you an additional safety net. Also, TAP flights are the best, inside Europe, to travel to/from Portugal.

Score: 5/5

15. Direct booking from Wizz 

The website was terribly slow. Takes ages! When I complained, they suggested me to book through their mobile application. They have friendly folks on their social media though. Wizz gives you the lowest prices and discounts to exotic locations in East Europe when you book directly. Their membership program is worth purchasing too.

Score: 5/5

16. Vayama

Vayama, a travel agent mostly based in India, seemed ok. But painfully I found that their 26$ package for the 40$ discount on your next trip is a scam/trap. You will never be able to redeem the discount. It has so many hidden clauses to avoid providing you the 40$ discount. Read my post on my experience with them - Is Vayama.com discount of 40$ a scam? Also, Vayama customer service is a joke! 

Score: 0/5

My final verdict, based on my experience with flights across Europe, Asia, and the USA is given below. Good luck with your travels!

VERDICT:

Tripsta: GOOD 5/5

BudgetAir: GOOD 5/5

Abreu: GOOD 5/5

TAP: GOOD 5/5

WIZZ: GOOD 5/5

Gotogate: FAIR 4/5

eDreams: FAIR 4/5

Local Agent: NOT BAD 3/5
Geostar: BAD 2/5

Kiwi.com: BAD 1/5

Vayama: BAD 0/5
TravelGenio/Travel2Be: BAD 0/5
Trip.com: BAD 0/5 

Is TravelGenio a Scam?

It is always a good idea to compare the flight prices across multiple travel agent sites before actually buying them. Skyscanner is a web site that lets you compare the flight prices across multiple sites such as TravelGenio, Tripsta, and eDreams.

TravelGenio, has always been the poortest performer across many of the flight booking sites that I tried. However, I keep falling for them again and again as they list the lowest price. But, TravelGenio is the best in their bait-and-switch pricing strategy. For example, a price may be listed as 506 Euro. But when you are about to pay, it will increase by 10 Euro for many of the popular cards. As of today, only Visa Credit and Maestro cards offer the promised price. Others have an increase of 10 Euro for the flight of 506 (thus making the price 516 Euro).

However, I had even worse experiences with them.

I share my 2 bad experiences below:

First bad experience:

After booking the flight and everything was finalized and confirmed (they even had the payment finalized from my debit card), Travelgenio sent me the below email from the address infort@corp.travelgenio.com.

Caro Cliente,
Tal como lhe informamos no processo de compra, a reserva que tentou realizar não pôde ser confirmada pela linha aérea.
Como alternativa, realizámos uma reserva com a melhor tarifa disponível e com vôos semelhantes.
A nova reserva que realizámos possui localizador 4KB5FY e está garantida durante o dia de hoje.
Necessitamos, por favor, que nos confirme se deseja adquirir ou não esta nova reserva, caso contrário, procederemos à sua anulação sem qualquer tipo de gasto.
Envio-lhe em outro e-mail o itinerário detalhado da reserva para que possa verificar se os vôos são do seu interesse.
Ficaremos aguardando as suas instruções.
A tarifa mais económica que lhe podemos oferecer é 60.00 Euros superior ao importe que reservou inicialmente
Muito obrigado.

[Goolge Translation:

Dear Customer,
As we inform you in the buying process, the reservation who tried to perform could not be confirmed by the airline.
Alternatively, we made a reservation with the best available rate and with similar flights.
The new reserve that has held locator 4KB5FY and is guaranteed during the day.
We need, please let us confirm whether to purchase or not this new reservation, otherwise, proceed to its cancellation without any expense.
I send you another e-mail the detailed itinerary of booking so you can check if the flights are of interest.
We'll be waiting for your instructions.
The lowest fare we can offer is 60.00 euros to import higher than initially reserved
Thank you very much.]

I replied:

Hi,

When I initially checked, the price indicated 752 Euro for 2 passengers. Then when I was about to pay, the price increased to 806,70 Euro, and I still paid and reserved the tickets. So that already is an increase of around 54 Euro.

Are you telling me that you are going to charge me an additional 60 Euro, making it 866 Euro, or are you telling me that you are going to charge 120 Euro more (60 Euro per person), and make it 926 Euro?

This is so frustrating. Please let me know and clarify how much is the current price, and how much, in addition to the 806 Euro that was reserved I should pay, so that I can confirm. Also let me know, how long will it take you to refund the amount, if I decide to cancel the booking.

Is there is a way I can create a bug report or feedback for this weird behaviour of the system?

I have used Travelgenio before, and it never had similar issues. It seems probably some management or other policy changes leading to this behaviour. I would stop using Travelgenio and instruct my friends and colleagues to do so (through social media, and travel reviews, etc), if this issue is not smoothly resolved.

Also, is this a real email, or a scammer impersonating Travelgenio? The email looks so unprofessional and extremely weird.

Regards,

Pradeeban.

Their reply:

Dear Customer,

 

Thank you for contacting Travelgenio.

 

In reference to your e-mail we inform you that the total amount is eur 864.74.
Please let us know on how to proced with the booking.

 

Yours sincerely,

I replied:

Ok, you may proceed with this for the total amount of 864.74 Euro. Please finalize this soon. Please do not keep randomly increasing the price further.

Also send a finalized invoice and confirmation to my email account once this is done and completed.

I do not want to mess up with my travel due to the mishaps in your system and policies.

Regards,

Pradeeban.


I was angry. So I replied once more:

I booked using Travelgenio, because it indicated 752 Euro. Otherwise, I would have used Travel2Be which showed a bit higher price (around 800 Euro, if I remember correct). Now finally I have to pay 864.70 Euro due to the inefficiency in Travelgenio. I wish your system was more effective. Also I noticed that the flight slots are quickly filling up. So I want to finalize this sooner. I do not want you to further increase the price or change the flight schedules.

I will be happy with your customer service, if you still could go ahead with 806,70 Euro, the amount I paid for, during the registration. If customer satisfaction is nothing for you, and if you still think it is not possible, you may go ahead with the 864.74 Euro as I indicated in the previous email.

I am writing up a blog post based on this experience. The ending and the verdict of that review blog post depends on how this issue is resolved.

Thank you.
Regards,
Pradeeban.

Eventually, I checked the prices online and with the local travel agent, and it turned out the prices went up during this delay, even in the other web sites. So I decided to pay TravelGenio the additional amount they asked, despite feeling betrayed.

During this conversation, I was not aware that Travel2Be actually has a partnership with TravelGenio, and they are probably owned by a single company. I later learned that from the TravelGenio web site itself, and from the signature of the emails I received:

Dear Customer,

Regarding the invoice for this booking, we have forward the information given to the corresponding department and as fast as possible you will receive the corresponding invoice.

We remain at your full disposition should you have any questions or need any further information.

Thank you and kind regards,


TRAVELGENIO/TRAVEL2BE

--
Giuditta
User Satisfaction Agent
Travelgenio.com

Second bad experience: 

Interestingly, I did not really remember the first experience when I booked another flight after some time. I just went for the cheapest option.

I paid for TravelGenio once more for another flight. Only after paying, I realized something not right. I immediately sent them this email:

When I was booking, it showed 154.01$. Suddenly the total appeared as 157.01$ with no explanation. Pls see the screenshot.

I expect an explanation how the 3$ is added to the final value magically.

Regards,

Pradeeban.

3$ magically added to the price.

Their reply:

Dear Pradeeban Kathiravelu,
Thank you for contacting our Advanced Support Department and sharing your comments with us. The feedback of our customers helps us to improve our products every day as well as the customer care provided.
We are writing to you regarding your booking T6T7FI.
In reference to your query, let us inform you that the prices shown at the availability page are subject to discounts and/or surcharges that will apply according to the payment form selected by you when you do the purchase.
At the payment page you can verify the payment methods available as well as the surcharges that apply to each one of them. If you select a payment method without discount, the price will change and the page will be immediately updated. As a consequence and before you confirm your booking definitely, you will be able to see, next to the “purchase” button, the final price you will have to pay according to the selected payment method.
However, and even if the final price, including surcharges, was shown before you confirmed the purchase, we understand your situation and therefore, as a goodwill gesture, we have refunded the amount corresponding to 3 usd, as you requested.
We hope you will travel with us again soon.
Kind regards,

Their reply was weird, cryptic, self-serving, and unnecessarily long (also not at all apologizing for their mess up). They just should have apologized for the technical glitch and refunded. However, I indeed received the 3$ back to my bank account. Nevertheless, if I did not pay attention, or if I did not complain, I would have lost my 3$.

Summary: TravelGenio may not be entirely a scam. But it follows shady business practices. Travel2Be is in fact another site managed by them.

VERDICT: AVOID TravelGenio and Travel2Be at any cost! 

TravelGenio and Travel2Be are scams. So what are the alternatives? Read my recommendations - My experience with flight reservation sites

How to Transfer Money free to a Foreign Account

Bank transaction rates for foreign currencies are exceptionally high, with poor transaction rates. TransferWise is an online platform that aims to solve this problem.

You can transfer your money to a foreign account for free up to 500 GBP, using the TransferWise referral link: https://transferwise.com/u/pradeebank

Similarly, share your own invite link with your friends, and their first transactions will be free as well if they use an invite link. The more invites you send, you will also be rewarded.

I have transferred money between US and EU accounts, as well as to Sri Lanka from the US and EU bank accounts. It really has a diverse list of currencies and speedy delivery. Try and confirm it on your own!

What made me a fan of TransferWise is not just their transparency and real transaction rates (you can confirm by comparing with xe.com provided transaction rates with TransferWise values). It is also the customer service of TransferWise. When I ran into some issues with a transaction, TransferWise went all their way to resolve the issue as quick as possible with their personalized support.

I am a happy customer of TransferWise, and this is my unbiased review as a regular user. :) Are you a user too? Please share your experience.

You may read my other reviews here.

TripAdvisor: How fake reviews can ruin your travel diaries..

There are many fake reviews in TripAdvisor. It is easy to spot one that harvests fake reviews. They are usually reviewers just have reviewed only the current one with a 5*. This is not to say that all the once-only reviewers are fake. But if a place is reviewed all 5* by these newbies, that should ring a bell. Moreover, I have seen in freelancing sites "employers" asking for 100s of reviews in sites such as TripAdvisor for a hundred dollars! It can also be friends filling TripAdvisor reviews for a restaurant owner, or even the restaurant employees creating multiple fake accounts to accumulate 5* ratings. 

It can also be social engineering. When I stayed in New Delhi in 2012, the hotel owner asked me to rate them 5* in TripAdvisor. That was my first review! I guess a normal person would have given 5*. Does not hurt. right? But I gave 4*, the rating I thought the hotel deserves (than what the owner hinted)! Would be easier to manipulate one's rating with some benefit (like a discounted rate) though. I am not going to give fake 5* ratings for free stuff though. :) I hope.

Always check the 1* ratings. They may show how the place mistreats the visitors. Also 4* ratings. They tend to be the genuine happy customers. Fake reviewers always give 5*. Not 4*. No one pays to give 4* ratings! Similarly, 2* ratings tend to be more rational than 1* too, unless the restaurant is really fishy and unpleasant.

I sent a detailed report to TripAdvisor content-integrity sometime back on a sample situation. Their response was along the lines of "At the same time, we have privacy policies in place which prevent us from being able to divulge to anyone external to TripAdvisor the results of any investigations."

Apart from being Nepal restaurants in Europe, what is the other similarity shared by "Sushi King, Wijnegem", "Sushi King, Malle", "Leo, Lisbon, Portugal", and "Fishtail, Lisbon, Portugal"? They all have been reviewed by the same set of early reviewers who gave 5* reviews with extra-ordinary positive reviews. These reviewers also created their accounts just to review these restaurants!

The first 2 restaurants are in Belgium and as their name suggests, are owned by a same chain. The last 2 are in Portugal, and owned by an individual (see the attachment for proof, taken from TripAdvisor). There are many accounts that were created to review 2 or 3 among these or just 1 of these restaurants! Some of these reviewers have reviewed 1 or 2 of these restaurants more than once! (5-star each time).

I have attached two reviewers with this association for these 4 restaurants. There are many. Just go through each of these restaurants and click the 5-* ratings. You can see reviewers created solely to review one or a few of these 4 restaurants. All these reviewers are Nepalese or Indian.
 

One can do an association rule mining across all these profiles and get more associations to show how these reviewers are having a strong correlation with each of these. These 4 may be more than 4. I mean, if you find a 5th association, try to build a cluster to see whether they share the same pattern. I am just a volunteer TripAdvisor member. I gave up after finding 4.

1. It is highly unlikely that a large share of reviewers visited all 4 of these restaurants in 2 different countries, and created their accounts to review only these 4!
2. I suspect they have some incentives.
2.1. I have previously seen random employers in freelancer websites seeking freelancers to bulk review their pages in Facebook, TripAdvisor, etc..
2.2. They are probably friends of the owner. In case of Leo, it is currently #1 in Lisboa with just 136 reviews. These reviews can be from bots. Even if they are from real humans, it is not hard to find 136 "friends" for an Indian/Nepalese restaurant owner in Portugal.
3. Given that Leo is the #1 in Lisboa now, unsuspecting tourists visit there since it is a "must" now, as listed #1 by TripAdvisor. Some of them are satisfied naturally. The food is not bad - and deserve 3* - 4* anyway. So they leave a positive review. Some were a bit disappointed learning this is just yet another Indian restaurant. However, the initial bootstrap from the fake reviewers were strong enough for Leo.

As a continuous volunteer reviewer in TripAdvisor, I am disappointed to learn that TripAdvisor's approval workflow is not smart yet.

1) The ranking algorithm should be changed to
1.1) ensure a meritocracy than a democracy. In the Internet, each account is not necessarily a human. So democracy in such systems is flawed. Currently, there is no difference getting 100 5* reviews from fake accounts or bots and 100, real reviewers with proven track record.
1.2) give more importance to the number of reviews. 1000 4* reviews are probably better than 4.5* rating with 137 reviews. This should of course not harm the new businesses. So needs a smart approach. Requires further research. Currently this is the loophole how Leo managed to become the first in Lisboa!
2) The approval workflow should consist of a data mining approach to ensure reviews are not creating a pattern. As of now, I was able to find a pattern very easily among these companies. With a large set of engineers and the management interface/API, this should be simple for TripAdvisor team.
3) Fix the reporting system. Currently it is a bot. First, I report, and a canned response asked me to send an email to this address. I am not even sure whether this will be considered properly.

Leo coming to the top spot reminds me the story - http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/tripadvisor-denies-rating-system-is-flawed-after-fake-restaurant-tops-rankings-in-italy-10354818.html

The difference is Leo actually exists as a normal Indian/Nepalese restaurant. But there are much better Nepal or Indian restaurants around, and this surely is not the #1 of Lisboa.

These first 100 reviews were given by fake reviewers to give an initial bootstrap to secure the first place, and following were social engineering. The tourists who blindly follow TripAdvisor and pay a visit here assuming this to be the best of Lisboa. Following this huge popularity, this small canteen restaurant is even unable to cope with the number of customers, making the waiting time grow large. Unsuspecting customers take all these positively. Some even fell for the mediocre Indian food, which can also be found in any other Indian/Nepal/Bengal restaurant around.

Finding your student apartment in Lisbon and Porto..

Originally written in 2014, this post was later updated recently.

It is not always an easy task to move to a country, which doesn't speak a common language as you do. Moreover, the visa requirements make it a time consuming process. Following my blog post on how to apply for a visa to study in Portugal (mostly focusing on Sri Lankan students; but also applicable to many other third countries), I started to receive questions from students seeking information on apartments and studies in Lisbon. There are a few issues that you may have to face. This post tries to discuss those concerns.

1. Universities provide a list of landlords to the students. But in my observation, these apartments tend to get booked faster and are also more expensive than the other available options. You are left with no choice other than to follow this list, as it is safer to reserve a room that your university recommends, than a random one as you will have to send one month of reservation/deposit of the room to the landlord. You will also have to be quick for the visa processes and also to make sure that you are not running out of the good and affordable apartments.

2. Not all the landlords will be able to understand English, and communicating with them regarding the visa requirements such as accommodation letters may be hard.

3. You are reserving a room without seeing it yourself, unless you are already there in the city. Mostly, descriptions by words are available, which are written by the landlords themselves.

4. It is very hard to send money to a third person by bank-transfer from Sri Lanka, due to the local regulations. This is done by the banks, case-by-case. It took me a considerable effort to send the reservation fee to the landlord. A transfer by paypal would be more convenient, though not many landlords would accept that. This issue may be specific to Sri Lankans. 

UniPlaces provides solution for these issues. UniPlaces.com is a third-party web site that provides accommodation options to students away from home. It lets the landlords list their apartments for free.

1. UniPlaces is partnered with the major universities in Lisbon, including the University of Lisbon (ULisboa). This makes UniPlaces a trusted web site for the students. It also includes a large number of options to choose from.

2. Having a proactive support service very fluent in English (and Portuguese, of course), it makes it easier to communicate via their support system (chat) or phone. If you need some assistance you may drop your number and information for UniPlaces to contact you.

3. UniPlaces provides neutral descriptions on the apartments, with photos. Searching for your apartment with specific requirements such as price, room type, and other features is very promising. As you may not be able to see your room before arriving at Lisbon, having a verification from a third-party makes your journey to Lisbon stress-free.

4. UniPlaces provides secured payment option via PayPal. Nevertheless, for those who have trouble with PayPal, UniPlaces still offers an option to pay through bank transfer.

5. As a start-up consisting of an international team of geeks, fresh graduates and students, UniPlaces has managed to have the student-feel in their listings. Learn more about the recommended areas in Lisbon, from UniPlaces.

Apart from Lisbon, UniPlaces lets you find apartments in London currently.

Later update on the 8th of September, 2016

It is expected that as a company grows, its approach changes considerably. Recently I was able to book an apartment through UniPlaces. The landlord accepted the booking, and hence the full charge of the first month rent as well as the service fee was reduced from my account.

However, after 10 days, the landlord cancelled the booking through UniPlaces without even letting me know for as a matter of courtesy and professionalism. It is funny that after accepting my payment the landlord also claimed one of the room mates has a dog, and asked whether I am fine with that. I mentioned him I am fine with the dog. It is contradictory with his UniPlaces posting where it indicates "No Pets Allowed"

 

Also after cancelling my booking for no reason, he immediately made the same apartment open for the same dates! See (October 1st, 2016 listed as available - the same dates I booked before).

I suspect there is a strong scam going on here with this landlord. Probably he is collecting the tenant details. Probably he is plain crazy and nasty.

But what saddens me is the UniPlaces' don't care policy. I warned them with all the details on this, to no proper response. The landlord now will go on to scam other students, wasting their time, and making their money locked between the bank transactions. I am awaiting the money to be refunded to my account. UniPlaces claimed that it has been refunded already - so I guess I will get it back again.

While I will still use UniPlaces for booking as I know the team and they are legit, I must warn them to be more caring regarding students. I mean, if as a student I cancel my booking, my service fees is gone and in most cases I won't get the security deposit (the first month rent paid to the landlord through UniPlaces) back. But on the other hand, the landlord can get away with his tactics by accepting the student/tenant at will, and rejecting later at will - with no reason whatsoever.

Users are the major pillar of any business. I hope UniPlaces will learn to respect the user reviews given to them in a private manner more positively, hence not requiring me to update this blog post.

For students, if you are searching for apartments, feel free to use UniPlaces.com. However, be aware of the scam artists as landlords. On the other hand, be warned that the prices are increased (which is reasonable for multiple reasons: UniPlaces needs to be paid for their services and employees. Second, there is an 8% flat rate per monthly rent charged on the landlords, which the landlord in turn collects back from the student by increasing the price. In addition there is a 25% charge for the first month as well). In addition some landlords tend to increase the price arbitrarily further more - as an unsuspecting student may pay more - why not. If you compare the price, I was able to find an almost identical studio for 450 Euro in Alameda listed as 675 Euro.

I wish the services be more transparent and caring of their all customers, than focusing on a specific subset (in this case, only the landlords, as the landlords tend to be the permanent customers with students being the one-time tenant customers).

In case, if you are looking for an apartment in Lisboa, NEVER find this landlord, who hides the existence of a dog (going to an extent to say "Pets are not allowed" in the listings - double standards!) and informs later after paying, and also cancels the booking once you have paid! Most probably his descriptions are fake too.

I wish good luck and success to my colleagues at UniPlaces despite these issues. Hope they will filter out these scam landlords sooner, and be more caring towards their student customers too, as they used to be - in the good old days.

Is Triptogether.com a Scam?

Short answer: Mostly scam.

I have previously reviewed Freelancer.com, which is not really a complete scam. However, Triptogether.com, which positions itself as a service for finding travel mates is a complete scam.

You can chat to someone for a very short period of time for free. After that, you will have to pay for each messages entered. It is actually a lot of money, if you continue to chat. Worse, the profiles, most of them that would contact you, are fake! There may be a few genuine unsuspecting users. But the majority (say 99%) of the profiles (at least the female profiles that are used to attract paying customers) are fake!

I found the link for this site from a Facebook travel group. Probably one of their employees advertising. Assuming it is genuinely related to travel and is similar to couchsurfing or airbnb, I gave it a try. Little did I know. The moment I created the profile, even with lack of any interesting information (except the somewhat boring profile picture, name, location, and job title), I started receiving chat messages. Most of them showed extreme interest, not just travelling, rather romantic (it was of course interesting and entertaining to hear those pick up lines from those 'females'). My profile had an open preference (18 or more, anyone - men or women). Regardless of this, I literally got requests from only young females with attractive profiles.

Most of them claim to be from China or Colombia. But a quick chat with them would reveal that they are fake. Some of them were just bots. A few of them indeed appeared to be real humans. Most of them appeared to be hired employees (chat professionals!) who are dedicated to talk longer and longer with the unsuspecting victims to absorb as much as they can to the site. They are just not the person they claim who they are. You may notice repetitions or same messages such as "do you like go to beach with me?" from "different" users.

Despite their extreme level of interest in you, the moment you ask to continue the chat in another free platform such as Facebook or Skype, they would just ignore and stick to this site. Sometimes you may hear "smart" responses such as, "best talk on this site is more secure dear". Interestingly, as much as I researched, the site was surely not more secure. Who would be willing to lose money paying for each message, in that site with a crappy chat system? Their intention is to make the victims stay longer and chat beyond the free 3 minutes of conversation to make them pay. However, as the site gets desperate to get money, eventually it does not even wait for you to send your first reply. Rather, it displays the below message, "Top up your balance and you will never miss the trip of your dream."

Any legitimate user that you may luckily encounter (I suspect that they exist in this site) would be delighted to continue the chat elsewhere, if they are really interested in travelling with you. Of course, there is another set of scammers in this site, the typical "Nigerian Scammers" (they are not really from Nigeria. This has become a metaphor), who attempts to collect your email address.

As they realize, you are not that stupid to pay, the chat frequency from the users will reduce. Since they are not individuals, but a group of scammers, it is possible for them to collaborate and coordinate on this. Also the chat requests come in bulk. Probably since the employees (those who are paid to chat, pretending to be young girls) go out for lunch and return together.

Further red flags are bugs in photo removal and profile picture changer. After changing and removing a profile picture, it magically came back. I suspect that even after deleting a photo, triptogether.com never removes them from their servers permanently. Deleting the profile or disabling it seems equally impossible as well. They just want to collect as many as real people, to their pool of fakes and bots.

I wonder why these scam sites continue to operate. Why can't someone come up with something real and legitimate and continue to earn revenue? Now why did I spend time writing a review for an unknown website that I found from a Facebook comment? The reason is, this site is not alone. There is a series of similar scam sites. I just wanted to warn the subscribers and readers of my blog to be aware of this and any similar site.

My suggestion is, avoid this and many other similar sites, to save your time and money. :) See you next time probably, with another review. :P Let me know your thoughts in the mean time. :D

Freelancer.com exams and reviews - why you should not trust them..

Fig 1. Spammers on "Freelancer exams"

It has been around ~20 months, since I wrote the review on Freelancer.com, "Is Freelancer.com a complete scam, or a partial scam?". Recently I was reviewing the comments section of the article and did more research. The situation hasn't changed much lately. Rather it just got worse. Before discussing further, I just clarify the readers that I am not a Freelancer.com user, except the use for reviewing purposes. Freelancer.com sucks. Here we will see why.

1. Freelancer.com exams is a joke.

Seriously. How can you measure someone's qualification or ability through some non-standard examination? Moreover, there are groups of scammers who even do these exams for you, if you pay them. They will require your credentials to do those exams on your behalf. There is a potential identity theft. This actually highlights an essential flow in the exams. You cannot trust these examinations as a genuine indication of someone's expertise.

The spam comments (See Fig 1) on my blog post from the desperate exam providers elaborate how these scammers will do the exams on your behalf! Instead of using proper marketing for their 'service', they decided to spam my blog post with the links to their 'service'. I have deleted the spammers comments from the blog post, such that the readers will not be misled.

These exam providers function for all the freelancing sites such as elance and oDesk. So this issue is not really specific to Freelancer.com. Anyway, to do an exam, you have to pay. Hence, this is a way for Freelancer.com to earn some money.

2. Most Valuable "Asset"
What makes a service attractive? You may have the excellent technology in your web site. But what if it does not have users? Specifically services that require a "match-making". Just like dating services make the potential partners meet, Freelancer web sites let the employers and freelancers meet. So, users are the most valuable asset of a system.

By vigorously acquiring multiple freelancing sites, and deploying strong media and marketing strategy, Freelancer.com has survived and thrived, despite the strong criticism it has received from the customers who felt violated by Freelancer.com. Freelancer.com however, does not respect its users at all. One who scan through the user reviews or even the comments on my previous blog post will notice this clearly.

3. Heavy delays on Payments. WHY?
You may successfully transfer money to your freelancer or employee via PayPal in a matter of seconds. But Freelancer takes days. It goes from 3 days and more. If this is the first time transfer, there is a verification process that lasts two weeks. You may be in a hurry to earn some money; but you will be delayed for at least 16 days, if this is your first time with the site.

Why? Is the Freelancer.com a police? No. Why do they do this? Because they can. Not only Freelancer.com. Plenty of web sites exploit their unsuspecting users. Employers have the wealth; freelancers have the time. Freelancer.com has users. As a third-party, Freelancer.com exploits the weakness of its users. In an ideal world, employers should be able to find their freelancers without a third party such as Freelancer.com. But it is not possible for everyone, as not everyone is blessed with connections and online visibility.

4. Canned responses from the support team
If you are stuck with some issue, you may expect to receive some help from the support team of Freelancer.com, which is, technically, nonexistent. They just provide canned responses. If they please, they will freeze your account for "verification purposes". This will happen, specially when your account has a considerable money in it.

Are they really so concerned that people are using their site for illegal purposes? I suspect. You do not hear much complains about PayPal or similar services.

5. Wikipedia Edit War

Fig 2. Edit war on Wikipedia Freelancer.com page

Now, those who got irritated by this web site, want to make their voice heard. They attempt to use Wikipedia for that. However, this has created an edit war in the Freelancer.com page on Wikipedia. It seems, an employee or a dedicated team of employees of Freelancer.com carefully monitors the Wikipedia page, and removes whenever something negative or controversial is added on their wiki page. They make sure the Wikipedia page is "clean".

The complaints from the users are noteworthy as they have appeared in multiple sources. However, due to the Wikipedia requirements to have "verifiable" sources, it is becoming very difficult to update the Wikipedia page with the other side of the story, given that the page is carefully monitored by Freelancer.com team, as well as some genuine Wikipedians. Refer to Fig 2 to see how unsatisfied users of Freelancer.com tried to add a section of "Criticism" on the Wikipedia page, and how Freelancer.com staff or supporters were successful in keeping it removed consistently. Fig 3 shows a screen shot of the "Criticism" section, when it existed.

If you have something to share, use web sites and blogs to make your voice heard. Before attempting to edit Wikipedia with your feelings, make sure you have already collected verifiable resources. You may consider publishing your side of the story to third-party publishers, which will later appear in the Wikipedia page.

Fig 3. Criticism section on the Wikipedia page

6. Fake positive reviews on employers and freelancers
It is not uncommon to see someone who has received highly positive reviews to be a bad employer or freelancer. Some of the reviews are proven to be fake. These users function as a network. It is like a mafia. Do not trust the reviews blindly. Suspect more, if all the reviews are from the same employer or freelancer. I hope Freelancer.com is aware of this, and ensure they eliminate the scammers out from their system when they detect them.

What can you, as a freelancer or employer, do?
As an employer or freelancer, try to avoid third-party services, if possible. If you still have to use them, try to find better alternatives to Freelancer.com, considering the very high number of negative experiences found. If you are already successful in Freelancer.com or similar sites, congratulations! You are lucky.

What can you, as freelancer.com, do? 
The problem with your service is real. Instead of denying it, attend to it genuinely. You probably do not need to rob the hard-earned money of the poor freelancers. Go through the Internet genuinely, and attend to them personally, instead of throwing some political reply to keep them wondering. Learn from other services. Develop a genuine interest in the users before it is too late.

What can you, as an entrepreneur, do?
There is surely a gap here. Try to create something new. Even if you have the most excellent technology, it won't be a success, unless you have people. Attract the people with your service. Give something new. Make it genuine. Learn what is needed and create something that can cater the need. If you already have a better alternative, publish it, advertise it, and reach to the audience.

I hope this post was useful, if you arrived here looking for some suggestions. Please share your thoughts in the comments.