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My worst travel day ever was in Lisbon last October
I landed and found out my cheap hostel booking was a scam, the address didn't exist. I had to walk around for three hours with my backpack in the rain looking for a new place. Ended up paying 90 euros for a last minute room, which blew my whole food budget for two days. The worst part was I had checked the reviews, but they were all fake. Has anyone else been totally scammed by a hostel booking site? How do you check if a place is real?
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adamellis3mo ago
Man that sounds awful, I feel for you. I mean, @jake191 is right, that's a brutal way to start a trip. For checking places, I always cross reference the address on Google Maps street view to see the building, and I only book on sites where the reviews are verified from an actual stay. Those review badges help a lot. Maybe it's just me, but I've gotten paranoid and won't book a place that only has text reviews with no profile pictures on the people posting them.
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baker.ben1mo ago
Oh man, that's rough. I've never had a booking be a total phantom like that, but I did show up to a place once that was a glorified storage closet with a mattress on the floor. The photos online showed a nice room with a window. Now I always look up the exact address on Google Maps and check the street view. I also make sure to only book places that have at least a few dozen reviews, and I read the bad ones first. A lot of fake places can't keep up a steady stream of detailed negative feedback.
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