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Used to book hostels through big sites until I got burned by a fake listing in Prague last summer
Showed up at 11pm with my backpack and the place was actually a boarded-up laundromat, had to scramble for a room. Anyone found a reliable way to vet budget stays before you get there?
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roberts953mo ago
Man that exact same thing went down with me in Barcelona last year.
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noaht153mo ago
Roberts hit it right on the head, I've heard that story a ton. I read somewhere that a lot of those fake listings are set up by people who just scrape photos from real hotels and then disappear after they get your cash. The trick I've seen people talk about is reverse image searching the photos on the listing before you book. If the same picture of a cozy lobby shows up for a hostel in Rome and a hotel in Thailand, you know it's a scam. Also checking the Google Maps street view is a good move, you can at least see if the building looks like a hostel or a laundromat before you go.
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