Writing this as an awareness post to never ever book an OYO directly or through any other portals. Even though we’ve heard enough horror stories about OYO canceling on arrival, we decided to book this beautiful property - Hideaway Heritage - in Shillong through booking.com since I never had bad experiences with them. Never again.
Normally for almost all booking.com properties, it is never required to pre-pay, but OYO kept pestering us with emails to pay to ‘confirm’ our stay. To avoid unnecessary drama on arrival I paid half in September (our stay was booked for November).
After arriving at Guwahati airport and on our way to the place, we received a call from ‘OYO property manager’ who had all my details including my phone number, booking number, how much I paid, and everything. He wanted us to pay the balance amount before 11 am or so in order to avoid cancellation and that other people are waiting to check in if not. I had no reason not to believe them since they had all my details and I did not want to roam around Shillong looking for another stay after a such long journey. Even their UPI looked legit and WhatsApp had OYO logo.
Only upon arrival at our homestay, we came to know we got scammed, and it was not actually from OYO and our details were leaked somehow. I enquired with our hostess if it was some ex-employee of her’s who has all the details still, but she denied it and also confirmed this has happened before to others as well, and that it’s always best to pay only on arrival. Why she has still kept the property on OYO, we don't know. Anyway, we had to put it behind us and not let it ruin the rest of our holiday.
The property itself was beautiful with a small forest with hike trails just behind. Friendly host.
One mistake I did was not confirming with the property via booking.com, before paying the scammer. I do have a cyber police complaint lodged against the account holder, but the police say it might be difficult to recover the money since they might already have moved it to multiple others account and the scammers are mostly from North and may not be viable to investigate for such relatively ‘small’ amount.
I learnt something new that day, to always call 1903 (Central Cyber Police Helpline) as soon as possible for the quickest recovery of your funds.
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