I would like to share my scandalous experience after booking an apartment in Brussels through the Agoda website, for 4 nights at a total rate of €443 (around €110 per night), including fees.From the start, there were unpleasant surprises:A mandatory photo request for our ID, which is highly questionable and exposes us to the risk of identity theft.Then, we were asked to pay an additional €54 in cash, without any official justification, written record, or prior mention on Agoda.It was then that we discovered that the Agoda reservation was actually subcontracted through Booking.com, and that the people responsible for handing over the keys were themselves opaque subcontractors, clearly working "off the books."We found ourselves trapped between:- Booking.com (which only communicates in English, incomprehensible to us),- Agoda, which denies any knowledge of these additional fees,- And these intermediaries willing to do anything to extract money, even going so far as to hold us up for over 6 hours without handing over the keys.The result: a reservation canceled without our knowledge, a refund of only €37 (!) out of €443, no immediate recourse, and our accommodation was finally reclaimed under threat of eviction after only two nights.But the nightmare didn't end there: the apartment was truly unsanitary:- Dilapidated bathroom (crumbling bathtub, unusable shower, filthy toilet)- Dangerous kitchen (sockets torn out, oven ready to fall off, unusable faucet)- No decent hot water- Dilapidated, dirty, dangerous, and indecent accommodationAnd throughout our stay, there was constant pressure, threats, and aggressive emails from all three parties. We were treated like fraudsters even though we had paid in full.We left at 7:00 a.m. under threat of eviction, traumatized by this shameful experience that ruined our vacation.My advice: NEVER USE AGODA. This site is a disguised scam platform, with no control over its service providers, leaving its customers in dangerous and illegal situations.I intend to report this situation to the fraud prevention authorities and the relevant bodies because it is simply unacceptable!
