Scammed by fake photos on Booking: claims and obtains compensation

“But have you seen the photos?”, “let me see the photos”, “I’m not convinced by their photos”. When it comes time to make a reservation (for a hotel, restaurant, or any service), checking photos online is now essential. This is because seeing them reassures the consumer by naively thinking that what is present in an image, can only be real.

Unfortunately, this has not been the case for some time, and online scams are always around the corner. Limiting yourself to “seeing is believing” often leads to claims now; consider also, more generally, of cases of fraud in the e-commerce world. The problem originates from the extreme ease with which it is possible to deceive with retouched images, sometimes completely altered, sometimes placed in the wrong context.

This was learned at their own expense by all those tourists who, instead of enjoying a vacation with hotels full of comfort and relax, found themselves living a nightmare due to various inefficiencies or, worse, the non-existence of the facility itself (we talk about ghost vacation houses). Moreover, reporting these frauds and injustices is not easy, nor is receiving a refund for holidays ruined by photos that are different from reality: many do not even try.

We report a very recent example, several newspapers are talking about it these days: a tourist from Milan vacationing on the Apulian coast demands compensation from the facility where he was staying because the photos of the hotel, published on the site (booking.com), did not correspond to reality. After three years of litigation, the appeal is upheld and he receives a refund.

It always seems to be another person’s problem until it happens to us. How many vacations do we book online? How many times is it not what was promised? On the photos posted we base our trust before clicking “book” and “pay”,assuming that we will find what we saw when we arrive.

And while we cannot know beforehand how a waiter will treat us at a restaurant, we should never be in doubt about the photos of the place posted online. It is to restore this trust lost in the digital world that TrueScreen is been developed: a simple, intuitive app that allows us to validate and certify in real time all the photos, videos, audios, and screens we capture with our smartphones. This innovative method guarantees that online content is indisputable, authentic and impossible to alter.

Using the TrueScreen App is very easy.
After logging in, simply select the capturing mode you need (photos, video, audio, screen recordings, documents, GPS location) and capture the content. Wait just a few seconds, that are required for data analysis and protection, and get a shareable technical report.