{"id":210166,"date":"2025-12-31T15:24:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T15:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/210166\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T15:24:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T15:24:09","slug":"kiwi-woman-on-holiday-scammed-out-of-10000-after-fake-bookabach-listing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/210166\/","title":{"rendered":"Kiwi woman on holiday scammed out of $10,000 after fake Bookabach listing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAnd she goes: \u2018I don\u2019t do Bookabach. What do you mean?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I tell you, my heart literally sank to my arse. What do you mean you don\u2019t do Bookabach? Who did I just pay $10,000 to?\u201d<\/p>\n

Pemberton said the woman was the same woman pictured in photographs connected to the property on Bookabach.<\/p>\n

The property owner guessed that whoever made the fake listing had taken photos of her home from an old real estate listing.<\/p>\n

They had also seemingly taken personal photos of her available online.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe girl [who] came out was the same girl that was the host in the Bookabach pictures, so this scammer has taken photos of the woman from her WhatsApp and has pretended to be her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheThe group of 10 friends flew to the Gold Coast for a fun break to celebrate the new year. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

With nowhere to go, the group found themselves at a local park trying to figure out where they would spend the night.<\/p>\n

One of their party managed to get through to someone at Bookabach and they were granted a few nights\u2019 free stay at a hotel.<\/p>\n

They were then able to book accommodation at a different property with Airbnb.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Bookabach\u2019s parent company, Expedia Group, told News.com.au that they were actively investigating the matter.<\/p>\n

\u2018Moral of the story – be careful\u2019<\/p>\n

They also acknowledged that the fake listing on their website had been removed and people were no longer able to make bookings for that property.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe sincerely apologise for Ms Pemberton\u2019s experience and want to assure you that we take any claims of fraudulent use of our platform very seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pemberton warned others who may look to book accommodation through websites such as Bookabach of the potential risks.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything happens for a reason. I think the moral of the story is: Be careful.<\/p>\n

\u201cI genuinely felt sick to my stomach, thinking that someone has just taken $10,000 and luckily.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she was lucky in that she was with people who were calm and she was grateful they were all safe and okay.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I just feel like something could\u2019ve gone really bad. I\u2019m never on booking accommodation [duty] again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up to The Daily H<\/a>, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cAnd she goes: \u2018I don\u2019t do Bookabach. What do you mean?\u2019 \u201cWhen I tell you, my heart literally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[26590,62925,74,28824,1558,127894,85832,299,37483,1866,1445,209,189,194,44266,111,43,139,69,1118,90,2847,3111,15452,88974,165,8229,20110,19054,6923,1354],"class_list":["post-210166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-26590","tag-accommodation","tag-after","tag-arrived","tag-been","tag-bookabach","tag-booked","tag-dream","tag-fake","tag-find","tag-friends","tag-group","tag-holiday","tag-kiwi","tag-listing","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-on","tag-only","tag-out","tag-scammed","tag-sour","tag-their","tag-they","tag-thought","tag-turned","tag-what","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}