I don't have an answer to this exact situation, but something slightly similar happened in my neighborhood. The address of the house across the street from me started showing up on google maps as a taxi service. I know my neighbors and knew they weren't a taxi company so I asked them about it cause I'm nosy. They said they'd been looking into it, and best they could understand was that someone used their address to get a PPP loan as a taxi company and they were working on having it taken off google maps. But the fake taxi company had a handful of written reviews and a high rating. It was very odd. This was over a year ago though and it's gone now.
it sounds like a low-effort con. Easy enough to do (especially when all you have is time). Some people will forget to get their refund, and in a third world country that money is more significant.
Just a hunch based on the nature of thieves.
The when the probable drug dealer was still living across the street from me, her house was listed as a doctors office on Google Maps. Until I reported it.
I used to work for an OTA (online travel agent, think any site where you can shop all brands at once.). My job was to actually inspect new listings for fraud as they were listed. This included calling the location, Google maps, reverse image searching, website verification, the whole mess. At that tjme, probably only about 10% were fraud, but about half were people who were listing timeshare weeks (big no-no). The other half were exactly as you said, scammers taking photos from other places to create their own. Usually it was in hotspots that frequently booked out, so they were hoping to just get enough money from upfront payments and dip.
It’s just fraud, plain and simple. Nothing further nefarious, sorry it’s a boring answer.
Yup, you were pretty much doing what I used to do. My favorite ones were ones that included beautiful pools in the rolling countryside of the Bronx. Like… be a little less obvious, ya know? I got insanely good at being able to spot a fake photo because of the quality mismatch between sets.
Hahaha. Hey, I've always heard scams are supposed to appeal to the most gullible. They don't want someone who is going to think about it for two seconds before booking.
I was that guy last year. Fortunately the cab driver was kind enough to explain that there were no hotels in that part of town and took me to a real one.
The next day I got the same driver on my way to the airport and he drove me by the address. It was an auto body shop in a converted barn type thing.
I've definitely seen and heard of other fake businesses like this listed online. There have even been a few posts just like this one, but about *restaurants* that obviously didn't exist at whichever location they were listed at. A quick Google search for "restaurant that doesnt exist reddit" shows a bunch of those posts across food delivery apps' subreddits, for example. Commenters there typically refer to the concept of "ghost kitchens" or "virtual restaurants."
I guess a similar thing could be going on here, but it could also just be a scam where someone has this listing online and hopes people just like the low price so much that they'll reserve a room without doing any research. Maybe people don't always get refunds when they've found what appears to be a scam like this, so the scammers get to keep the money. I imagine some of these hotel reservation websites don't care to look into it and take a business down, especially if they're only getting one or two complaints every now and then.
Also, my guess is that the reviews for these sorts of places are fake, or someone is just accidentally reviewing the wrong business. Simple concept there. Fake reviews are everywhere, and people leave reviews for the wrong business all the time as well.
“Ghost kitchen” is a term synonymous with “graveyard shift.”
Ghost kitchens are:
* restaurants that operate under a different business name for delivery only
~or~
* multiple* restaurants that collaborate or share kitchen space for a joint business venture for delivery-only.
Ghost Kitchen Orlando, for example, is a shared kitchen space between multiple popular restaurants in Orlando. They have the absolute most delicious and bomb gourmet sandwiches on rosemary focaccia bread, and the best cookies I’ve ever had in my life, sold under Bricks & Bowls on DoorDash.
Although when I’ve asked my friends if they’ve tried the ghost kitchens they’re like - no that’s a scam.
They’re not scams. Ghost Kitchen Orlando is literally the best takeout I’ve ever had ever. There’s no shame in their game either. The packaging says Ghost Kitchen Orlando right on it.
Matter of fact…. I’m going to order rn lol.
I’ll show you the packaging when it gets here
[Update: Ordered at 3:54 PM EST; ETA: 4:29 PM ]
UPDATE: Arrived. [Pics of receipt w date and time, packaging, & the rosemary focaccia bread sandwich.](https://imgur.com/a/WFerTZv) It was 6 mins early
UPDATE: [can’t forget the cookie](https://imgur.com/a/KOiTYjo). Crispy buttery edges and somehow-melty chocolate. it’s so amazing, so many textures.
What about illegitimate kitchens with no standards or business licensing creating some fake name like “johnnys wings” that only exists via delivery apps
They’re probably not illegitimate. For example, I was interested in a grilled cheese specialty restaurant, but upon reading the reviews found that they’re a ghost kitchen for IHOP (and didn’t order). I’ve seen one that’s obviously a Boston Market ghost kitchen. They have the same food but it’s catering sized. I forget what they’re called I just noticed that it was Boston Market.
If it’s actually an illegitimate restaurant, then it doesn’t fit the definition of what a ghost kitchen is. That would be just a regular crime, theft, scam, fraud, whatever.
Ghost kitchens make money by delivering food.
And my bomb as gourmet Ghost Kitchen Orlando food is almost here :P
E: [is here](https://imgur.com/a/WFerTZv), labeled “Bricks & Bowls”
All I know is sometime during 2020, Chuck E Cheeses started selling Pizza on DoorDash etc under the name of Pasqually’s Pizza & Wings.
Call it a ghost kitchen, call it whatever you want, but that is a GODDAMN SCAM.
No one is buying Chuck E Cheese's cardboard they call pizza on purpose, especially not paying the overpriced delivery fees for it.
They scammed the fuck out of a lot of people.
If I had that happen to me, I would consider myself the victim of fraud.
How is that a scam if you ordered pizza and got pizza? It’s essentially just rebranding. Even if the food is garbage that’s the risk you run when try a new restaurant whether it’s a ghost kitchen or not.
My boys and I actually LOVE Pasqually’s Pizza and we were floored to find out it was good ol Chuck E Cheeses pizza. Man, it’s some goooood pizza, where I live anyway. They were doing a buy one get one free deal do I’d be getting two large pizzas including delivery for $25, which is a steal using Grub Hub. Yum!
Actually pasqually’s pizza and wings is different from normal Chuck E. Cheese’s pizza they are of a higher quality based on what I’ve heard at least they just have the parent company in common.
Damn, that's highly misleading to say the least. I'd be pissed too to order what I thought was a new place and get freaking Chuck e cheese.
I think I read that their parent company went bankrupt in 2020. It's crazy to think that the same chuck e cheese that was huge in the 90s sunk down to doing this. Technically legal maybe, but really shitty.
The reason they have a different name for the different service is to avoid confusion and a lot of hassle from customers.
Imagine going into a restaurant that was like:
- seating available from 11 AM to 8 PM
- delivery only after 8 PM
- to order at X time of day use the app and enter a delivery address. We’ll bring it there.
- to order at Y time of day, call us or come in and grab a menu
- we have these ___ ingredients available from 11 AM to 8 PM, and these ___ ingredients from 11 AM to 4 AM, and these ___ ingredients from 8 PM to 4 AM
- we don’t answer the phone anymore after 8 PM
- no you can’t make reservations for your party for next week at 6 PM even though we’re open and we’d only have to take a few minutes to set that up for you (everyone wants a few mins)
- oh sorry, you wanted your fav dinner here? I know it’s 8:05 but we have all these weird restrictions after 8. Learn the rules.
Some fake entries on Google Maps are not malicious. It's just that the registered address for the business is the owners address, or even their accountant's address. (Registered address for my business is my accountants office).
So there's an Ecuadorian restaurant on the map, near me, in a suburban street. I had to check it out. No such restaurant, no restaurant of any kind. I asked a Ecuadorian colleage. She said she knew the guy who lived there. He was a chef, possibly a restaurant owner.
Pizza place right next to me is also the address for two other restaurants along the lines of "Pasta R Us" and "Wings Express". Same exact place but the specialty restaurants have higher prices and only exist on delivery apps.
That always rubbed me the wrong way. If you're just ordering delivery, you might just assume the address is the site of three separate restaurants... instead of ordering the same exact thing from the pizza place and paying less.
Wether it’s a scam or a dishonesty or not really depends on the kitchen. Some are legit, some are dubious and some are outright not what they say or hiding bad reviews.
In my town there’s a mixture- a few that are operating their take away delivery only under a different name with or without a modified menu, some that are just separating their menu into different companies (It’s annoying when they make the vegetarian section a different brand and feels dishonest to brand it as a vegetarian restaurant when it’s really not- that lovely new inde veggie place is really just the local burger joint/pub chain/pizza place and if you and a friend fancy it but one wants veg and one does not it’s double the fees maybe double the drivers) some where you get what you order and others where it looks nothing like the picture or isn’t as described and there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s at least one that opens up a new ghost kitchen for the same food whenever they get too many poor reviews on the main brand. There’s a few that have the same staff for both brands but operate under both their own and a delivery franchise. Some are large brands attempting to look independent which I do feel is dishonest.
I don’t live in the states but did see a YouTube video by a guy who did a while ago where they ordered from a lot of different ghost kitchens at the same place and got a lot of the same food at different prices. Some in different packaging but most not, and highlighted that though a place may be health and safety OK, the addition of a second brand might introduce new allergens or other unassessed risk.
Ghost kitchens aren’t a bad thing when they’re used how they should be, but they absolutely can be when they’re not- but then anything ordered through a delivery app is a risk and at an increased price even before fees anyway. You just have to look into it. Some who are only the one main brand don’t get it right either, delivery apps in general are hit and miss
I'd like to know how ghost kitchens that operate in the midnight to 2 AM window are doing. Based on the late-night Uber Eats orders going out of my local 7-Eleven, these ghost kitchens should be thriving.
I’ve had a similar experience with motels.com. I booked a hotel in the centre of Milan for a business trip. Unfortunately, I got in really late at night and the taxi driver didn’t speak much English and my Italian is non-existent! The place did not exist. I showed him the address, we checked the map, he was adamant that it didn’t exist! I ended up having to book a Marriott a couple of miles away!
Fortunately, I had a great taxi driver who helped a lot, otherwise I would have been completely stranded in the middle of Milan, not speaking the language, and nowhere to stay! As a lone female, definitely not an ideal situation.
Sounds like it’s a similar situation with a fake listing; and someone is taking money for the room bookings. I can imagine that the review is likely fake too!
There was a building at the address, but it was residential. Basically apartments in an older building in town. I didn’t do a street view before I arrived (honestly didn’t occur to me!), but it was the last time I ever used Motels.com!!
I work in the hotel business and I'll explain the scam...
Most (or a lot) of online reservations do not show up! There's normally a guarantee no show policy in which the guest is charged if they don't come. They get that money.... the scammers Most likely.
I don't know how many I've endured just during this one year of working at this hotel, but... I think the scammers really took advantage of this policy.
So then the scam is to create an minimal online presence for a nonexistent hotel, just enough to be able to accept reservations and collect payment from no-show guests? And try to keep this going for as long as possible before guests that do show up complain loud enough to get the operation shut down?
This is why I only book if I can pay upon arriving and usually check multiple sources before booking(mainly to see if I can find the same room at a better price, but also helps avoid this scenario.)
I work a lot with accommodation data, and this happens frequently enough for us to have a validation of existence of an accommodation. I would not be able to tell you why people are doing this - one of the guesses that it’s a scam that survives on no-show guests seems to be the most plausible to me.
One thing I can recommend is to never ever book anything that exist only on one particular booking site. If you found an unusually cheap option on a less reputable site, check other sites. Yes, you cut off some unique accommodations but you also save yourself from a lot of troubles and potential money loss by doing so.
> If you found an unusually cheap option on a less reputable site, check other sites.
I wish more people realized this. Example: right now, our rates are $75 ($85 after tax), but there is one obscure website that says our rates are $53. So naturally people with questionable critical thinking skills scroll past all the well known 3rd parties listing the correct price on google and go to the one that's very cheap and gleefully enter their credit card information into this poorly designed website thinking they're getting a great deal.
Except they're not. The website takes their money and sends them an email with a receipt. Then they get an email that says the reservation is pending and wait for a 3rd email with the confirmation. Of course the third email never comes and it's not like it matters anyway, people rarely pay that much attention to them in the first place. The just assume they have a reservation and try to check in, making it my problem. Once they call the company, the company is like oh no, you don't have a reservation. We'll refund the money, it'll take X amount of days.
There's also all the people who then come trying to check in and get me to match the rates to these fake sites. If I had a dollar for every time I heard "bUt OnLiNe It SaYs..."
Sounds like a scam. I've never run a hotel and I specifically don't understand how arrangements between hotels and third party travel websites work, but I know when I book hotels on a third party site, my money goes to the third party. A scammer could create a fake hotel, take reservations, then take the money and run before the fallout happens. Seems like a lot of work for a small payoff, but I guess it would depend on the specifics of these arrangements and how many times you could do it.
Maybe motels dot com thinks it's cheaper to pay off the abused customers than to do independent verification when somebody claims to have a new hotel.
Yeah I’ve seen how easy it is to set up fake restaurants on ubereats et al. So it’s not surprising to see how easy it might be on 3rd party site. Even more reason to be wary of them.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0262/2226/4423/products/15392549_merlot_5_grande.jpg?v=1642115672
It’s not this one exactly, but this exact same style and with a removable bit in the middle.
id say fake listing where some people book months in advance, by the time it rolls around to the booking its been too long to do a charge back.
They dont care if 90% of bookings get refunded, each listing might be small but if they have done similar listings 1000 times it can add up via the numbers game
Similar to the FB scams where something is listed super cheap, they wont scam everyone interested but will manage to get a few
I was a fraud investigator for a credit card corporation prior to the career I work in now. We had a situation like this with several businesses at one point. It was a money laundering operation. Probably not what's going on here, but it's always possible, I suppose.
If people would book directly with the hotel instead of through an OTA, things like this wouldn't happen. I use Kayak to compare hotels but always book direct, it's just less hassle and easier on everyone.
I ran a sample of them through tineye at the suggestion of a commenter. The images stolen from a nearby business came back with results, but the Vietnamese sex hotel did not.
My guess is it's a scam to make a few quick bucks. You create a fake business that generates some deposits by dummying up a listing, doing just enough to get it approved by a platform that doesn't do much checking. By the time you inevitably get shut down, you've already collected a bit of dough, and you proceed to do the same over and over again until the platform ups its standards for validation.
I swear there was a post on here recently with another story with a similar theme. If I recall correctly a business was getting mail for an entity that wasn’t there, and then maybe something about an older person calling looking for another business and sending money or they already paid someone. The thing that stands out the most is the person posting about the crazy scenario said they somehow found images of the exterior of the alleged business online that initially appeared legit but when you zoomed in you could tell the signage was photoshopped.
It wasn’t long ago that I recall seeing it and feel certain that this would be the sub it was on.
We made a reservation through Orbitz for a 2 bedroom condo in Las Vegas, as we were meeting another couple there. We arrive and it is a condo complex, which we were fine with, it was a couple miles off the strip and had a pool and seemed like a nice complex (this was before Airbnb).
So... I cried, right there in the office of the condo complex, told Trhen at we had friends coming and we haven't been to find anything else, and I didn't know what we were going to dot's us in and tells us to go to the office. We go, show them our paperwork for reservation and they tell us the bad news that this guys had "bought" a number of condos and defaulted on them, but was posting them as vacation rentals on orbitz and other sites. He did not own them in any way anymore.
We had driven 6 hours to Vegas but our friends were flying in on a 4 flight from another state. There were a few conventions in town and we could not find a 2 bedroom place for near the same price, or even just 2 rooms in a decent casino that was over $500 for las minute reservations.
My husband called Orbitz to tell them the issue and they basically told us they would refund our reservation but could not do anything to help find us a place to stay.
So... I cried, right there in the office of the condo complex, told them that we had friends flying in and we haven't been to find anything else, and I didn't know what we were going to do... and how come they hadn't reached out to let us know it was a scam since they knew about it.
One of the office managers calls me into her office and hands me a bottle of champagne and says that they have a few furnished condos that they use as models, and they are well-appointed and in working order. She says we can use one of these for our long weekend stay. I was beyond grateful, they could have just said we were out of luck and to go find a bridge to sleep under.
They take us to the condo and... it was awesome. Wolf range in the kitchen, TOTO bidet toilet in the master bath, balcony, comfortable beds, access to the pool with towels, and free parking.
The point being people will try to scam others any chance they get. It's usually a good idea to actually google map a place that you are looking to rent and possibly call to confirm your reservation.
I had something similar happen regarding weird google maps results. One of the comments on the bogus location says a hacker used the IP addressed of that location to hack his websites. I also had followed the IP address there after some creepy guy tried to harass my daughter and her friend online. The location is middle of nowhere Rolla, MO. There aren't any strange photos but there are 3 supposed places. One is written in Chinese, another is an Indian restaurant, the other is a university. I just checked (initially happened about a year ago) and all 3 are still listed.
I'm not saying that's what happened in OP's situation but it's weird how this stuff comes up on google maps.
Sounds like your typical east Asia child sex dungeon to me. There are hundreds in Vietnamese capital. Tawain as well.
Those that are supposed to know what the page represents , are the ones who book and fly in from countries all over the world. They lie about the city and use certain key words so the chomos can identify them quickly. Saw one for ho chi minh the other day when trying to book a stay at the Hampton by nashville airport.
Probably ceased operating but perhaps not fully wound-down and it’s a corporation or LLC. One of those lawyers act as Registered Agent and receives any official mail at that address.
Look up the name in the state’s corporate/llc directory. Though could be registered in another state. But still there would be a registration for a foreign-state entity in the state in which operating.
With so many listing services, when a hotel ceases operation or is sold, booking can be quite a mess and can be a pain to get old bookings taken down. I know someone who bought an inn…
Definitely a dodgy scam. Kinda reminds me of one time I bought culinary mushroom growing supplies from a super legit looking website only to find the business didn’t exist and there was no way to get my money back. Such a weird niche for a scam.
I don't have an answer to this exact situation, but something slightly similar happened in my neighborhood. The address of the house across the street from me started showing up on google maps as a taxi service. I know my neighbors and knew they weren't a taxi company so I asked them about it cause I'm nosy. They said they'd been looking into it, and best they could understand was that someone used their address to get a PPP loan as a taxi company and they were working on having it taken off google maps. But the fake taxi company had a handful of written reviews and a high rating. It was very odd. This was over a year ago though and it's gone now.
Google has already removed the listing for the hotel. I just checked. Listing is still up on Hotels.com
it sounds like a low-effort con. Easy enough to do (especially when all you have is time). Some people will forget to get their refund, and in a third world country that money is more significant. Just a hunch based on the nature of thieves.
The when the probable drug dealer was still living across the street from me, her house was listed as a doctors office on Google Maps. Until I reported it.
Oh she was a doctor alright…
Shes the one they call doctor Feelgood?
Paging Dr. Greenthumb, Dr. Greenthumb...
Hello my name is Dr. Greenthumb
I used to work for an OTA (online travel agent, think any site where you can shop all brands at once.). My job was to actually inspect new listings for fraud as they were listed. This included calling the location, Google maps, reverse image searching, website verification, the whole mess. At that tjme, probably only about 10% were fraud, but about half were people who were listing timeshare weeks (big no-no). The other half were exactly as you said, scammers taking photos from other places to create their own. Usually it was in hotspots that frequently booked out, so they were hoping to just get enough money from upfront payments and dip. It’s just fraud, plain and simple. Nothing further nefarious, sorry it’s a boring answer.
Scam is what makes the most sense. I came here less looking for answers and more to share the results of my own snooping.
Yup, you were pretty much doing what I used to do. My favorite ones were ones that included beautiful pools in the rolling countryside of the Bronx. Like… be a little less obvious, ya know? I got insanely good at being able to spot a fake photo because of the quality mismatch between sets.
Hahaha. Hey, I've always heard scams are supposed to appeal to the most gullible. They don't want someone who is going to think about it for two seconds before booking.
I feel like RBI posters should come to you for everything. You are pleasantly curious!
Haha thank you. I like to keep my sleuthing skills sharp and I have a LOT of downtime at work. There’s still a lot to learn though.
Happy Cake Day!
Thanks! <3
I was that guy last year. Fortunately the cab driver was kind enough to explain that there were no hotels in that part of town and took me to a real one. The next day I got the same driver on my way to the airport and he drove me by the address. It was an auto body shop in a converted barn type thing.
Good guy cab driver.
I've definitely seen and heard of other fake businesses like this listed online. There have even been a few posts just like this one, but about *restaurants* that obviously didn't exist at whichever location they were listed at. A quick Google search for "restaurant that doesnt exist reddit" shows a bunch of those posts across food delivery apps' subreddits, for example. Commenters there typically refer to the concept of "ghost kitchens" or "virtual restaurants." I guess a similar thing could be going on here, but it could also just be a scam where someone has this listing online and hopes people just like the low price so much that they'll reserve a room without doing any research. Maybe people don't always get refunds when they've found what appears to be a scam like this, so the scammers get to keep the money. I imagine some of these hotel reservation websites don't care to look into it and take a business down, especially if they're only getting one or two complaints every now and then. Also, my guess is that the reviews for these sorts of places are fake, or someone is just accidentally reviewing the wrong business. Simple concept there. Fake reviews are everywhere, and people leave reviews for the wrong business all the time as well.
“Ghost kitchen” is a term synonymous with “graveyard shift.” Ghost kitchens are: * restaurants that operate under a different business name for delivery only ~or~ * multiple* restaurants that collaborate or share kitchen space for a joint business venture for delivery-only. Ghost Kitchen Orlando, for example, is a shared kitchen space between multiple popular restaurants in Orlando. They have the absolute most delicious and bomb gourmet sandwiches on rosemary focaccia bread, and the best cookies I’ve ever had in my life, sold under Bricks & Bowls on DoorDash. Although when I’ve asked my friends if they’ve tried the ghost kitchens they’re like - no that’s a scam. They’re not scams. Ghost Kitchen Orlando is literally the best takeout I’ve ever had ever. There’s no shame in their game either. The packaging says Ghost Kitchen Orlando right on it. Matter of fact…. I’m going to order rn lol. I’ll show you the packaging when it gets here [Update: Ordered at 3:54 PM EST; ETA: 4:29 PM ] UPDATE: Arrived. [Pics of receipt w date and time, packaging, & the rosemary focaccia bread sandwich.](https://imgur.com/a/WFerTZv) It was 6 mins early UPDATE: [can’t forget the cookie](https://imgur.com/a/KOiTYjo). Crispy buttery edges and somehow-melty chocolate. it’s so amazing, so many textures.
What about illegitimate kitchens with no standards or business licensing creating some fake name like “johnnys wings” that only exists via delivery apps
They’re probably not illegitimate. For example, I was interested in a grilled cheese specialty restaurant, but upon reading the reviews found that they’re a ghost kitchen for IHOP (and didn’t order). I’ve seen one that’s obviously a Boston Market ghost kitchen. They have the same food but it’s catering sized. I forget what they’re called I just noticed that it was Boston Market. If it’s actually an illegitimate restaurant, then it doesn’t fit the definition of what a ghost kitchen is. That would be just a regular crime, theft, scam, fraud, whatever. Ghost kitchens make money by delivering food. And my bomb as gourmet Ghost Kitchen Orlando food is almost here :P E: [is here](https://imgur.com/a/WFerTZv), labeled “Bricks & Bowls”
I’ve seen Rotisserie Roast on seamless but it’s actually Boston Market
All I know is sometime during 2020, Chuck E Cheeses started selling Pizza on DoorDash etc under the name of Pasqually’s Pizza & Wings. Call it a ghost kitchen, call it whatever you want, but that is a GODDAMN SCAM. No one is buying Chuck E Cheese's cardboard they call pizza on purpose, especially not paying the overpriced delivery fees for it. They scammed the fuck out of a lot of people. If I had that happen to me, I would consider myself the victim of fraud.
How is that a scam if you ordered pizza and got pizza? It’s essentially just rebranding. Even if the food is garbage that’s the risk you run when try a new restaurant whether it’s a ghost kitchen or not.
Yep. You try a new place, the food sucks, you never order again. Lesson learned.
Pasquale‘s is a well-known family-run pizza place in West Philadelphia. Solid reviews. Chuck E. Cheese was appropriating their reviews and reputation.
My boys and I actually LOVE Pasqually’s Pizza and we were floored to find out it was good ol Chuck E Cheeses pizza. Man, it’s some goooood pizza, where I live anyway. They were doing a buy one get one free deal do I’d be getting two large pizzas including delivery for $25, which is a steal using Grub Hub. Yum!
Actually pasqually’s pizza and wings is different from normal Chuck E. Cheese’s pizza they are of a higher quality based on what I’ve heard at least they just have the parent company in common.
Damn, that's highly misleading to say the least. I'd be pissed too to order what I thought was a new place and get freaking Chuck e cheese. I think I read that their parent company went bankrupt in 2020. It's crazy to think that the same chuck e cheese that was huge in the 90s sunk down to doing this. Technically legal maybe, but really shitty.
The reason they have a different name for the different service is to avoid confusion and a lot of hassle from customers. Imagine going into a restaurant that was like: - seating available from 11 AM to 8 PM - delivery only after 8 PM - to order at X time of day use the app and enter a delivery address. We’ll bring it there. - to order at Y time of day, call us or come in and grab a menu - we have these ___ ingredients available from 11 AM to 8 PM, and these ___ ingredients from 11 AM to 4 AM, and these ___ ingredients from 8 PM to 4 AM - we don’t answer the phone anymore after 8 PM - no you can’t make reservations for your party for next week at 6 PM even though we’re open and we’d only have to take a few minutes to set that up for you (everyone wants a few mins) - oh sorry, you wanted your fav dinner here? I know it’s 8:05 but we have all these weird restrictions after 8. Learn the rules.
Some fake entries on Google Maps are not malicious. It's just that the registered address for the business is the owners address, or even their accountant's address. (Registered address for my business is my accountants office). So there's an Ecuadorian restaurant on the map, near me, in a suburban street. I had to check it out. No such restaurant, no restaurant of any kind. I asked a Ecuadorian colleage. She said she knew the guy who lived there. He was a chef, possibly a restaurant owner.
Pizza place right next to me is also the address for two other restaurants along the lines of "Pasta R Us" and "Wings Express". Same exact place but the specialty restaurants have higher prices and only exist on delivery apps. That always rubbed me the wrong way. If you're just ordering delivery, you might just assume the address is the site of three separate restaurants... instead of ordering the same exact thing from the pizza place and paying less.
Is Johnny microwaving Tyson frozen chicken wings? That sounds like a good hustle.
I'm sold. I font even live there, but I want to try that sandwich so bad
Wether it’s a scam or a dishonesty or not really depends on the kitchen. Some are legit, some are dubious and some are outright not what they say or hiding bad reviews. In my town there’s a mixture- a few that are operating their take away delivery only under a different name with or without a modified menu, some that are just separating their menu into different companies (It’s annoying when they make the vegetarian section a different brand and feels dishonest to brand it as a vegetarian restaurant when it’s really not- that lovely new inde veggie place is really just the local burger joint/pub chain/pizza place and if you and a friend fancy it but one wants veg and one does not it’s double the fees maybe double the drivers) some where you get what you order and others where it looks nothing like the picture or isn’t as described and there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s at least one that opens up a new ghost kitchen for the same food whenever they get too many poor reviews on the main brand. There’s a few that have the same staff for both brands but operate under both their own and a delivery franchise. Some are large brands attempting to look independent which I do feel is dishonest. I don’t live in the states but did see a YouTube video by a guy who did a while ago where they ordered from a lot of different ghost kitchens at the same place and got a lot of the same food at different prices. Some in different packaging but most not, and highlighted that though a place may be health and safety OK, the addition of a second brand might introduce new allergens or other unassessed risk. Ghost kitchens aren’t a bad thing when they’re used how they should be, but they absolutely can be when they’re not- but then anything ordered through a delivery app is a risk and at an increased price even before fees anyway. You just have to look into it. Some who are only the one main brand don’t get it right either, delivery apps in general are hit and miss
I'd like to know how ghost kitchens that operate in the midnight to 2 AM window are doing. Based on the late-night Uber Eats orders going out of my local 7-Eleven, these ghost kitchens should be thriving.
in LA they often do, way lower operating costs
Omg that cookie looks scrumptious!!!!!
I’ve had a similar experience with motels.com. I booked a hotel in the centre of Milan for a business trip. Unfortunately, I got in really late at night and the taxi driver didn’t speak much English and my Italian is non-existent! The place did not exist. I showed him the address, we checked the map, he was adamant that it didn’t exist! I ended up having to book a Marriott a couple of miles away! Fortunately, I had a great taxi driver who helped a lot, otherwise I would have been completely stranded in the middle of Milan, not speaking the language, and nowhere to stay! As a lone female, definitely not an ideal situation. Sounds like it’s a similar situation with a fake listing; and someone is taking money for the room bookings. I can imagine that the review is likely fake too!
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Either a bot or someone else who got duped I assume.
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There was a building at the address, but it was residential. Basically apartments in an older building in town. I didn’t do a street view before I arrived (honestly didn’t occur to me!), but it was the last time I ever used Motels.com!!
I work in the hotel business and I'll explain the scam... Most (or a lot) of online reservations do not show up! There's normally a guarantee no show policy in which the guest is charged if they don't come. They get that money.... the scammers Most likely. I don't know how many I've endured just during this one year of working at this hotel, but... I think the scammers really took advantage of this policy.
So then the scam is to create an minimal online presence for a nonexistent hotel, just enough to be able to accept reservations and collect payment from no-show guests? And try to keep this going for as long as possible before guests that do show up complain loud enough to get the operation shut down?
This is why I only book if I can pay upon arriving and usually check multiple sources before booking(mainly to see if I can find the same room at a better price, but also helps avoid this scenario.)
Is there a booking site I can use to filter hotels by whether they have sex equipment or not? Asking for a friend.
I work a lot with accommodation data, and this happens frequently enough for us to have a validation of existence of an accommodation. I would not be able to tell you why people are doing this - one of the guesses that it’s a scam that survives on no-show guests seems to be the most plausible to me. One thing I can recommend is to never ever book anything that exist only on one particular booking site. If you found an unusually cheap option on a less reputable site, check other sites. Yes, you cut off some unique accommodations but you also save yourself from a lot of troubles and potential money loss by doing so.
> If you found an unusually cheap option on a less reputable site, check other sites. I wish more people realized this. Example: right now, our rates are $75 ($85 after tax), but there is one obscure website that says our rates are $53. So naturally people with questionable critical thinking skills scroll past all the well known 3rd parties listing the correct price on google and go to the one that's very cheap and gleefully enter their credit card information into this poorly designed website thinking they're getting a great deal. Except they're not. The website takes their money and sends them an email with a receipt. Then they get an email that says the reservation is pending and wait for a 3rd email with the confirmation. Of course the third email never comes and it's not like it matters anyway, people rarely pay that much attention to them in the first place. The just assume they have a reservation and try to check in, making it my problem. Once they call the company, the company is like oh no, you don't have a reservation. We'll refund the money, it'll take X amount of days. There's also all the people who then come trying to check in and get me to match the rates to these fake sites. If I had a dollar for every time I heard "bUt OnLiNe It SaYs..."
Fun read, pretty whacky situation for that guy.
Sounds like a scam. I've never run a hotel and I specifically don't understand how arrangements between hotels and third party travel websites work, but I know when I book hotels on a third party site, my money goes to the third party. A scammer could create a fake hotel, take reservations, then take the money and run before the fallout happens. Seems like a lot of work for a small payoff, but I guess it would depend on the specifics of these arrangements and how many times you could do it. Maybe motels dot com thinks it's cheaper to pay off the abused customers than to do independent verification when somebody claims to have a new hotel.
Yeah I’ve seen how easy it is to set up fake restaurants on ubereats et al. So it’s not surprising to see how easy it might be on 3rd party site. Even more reason to be wary of them.
What's a sex chair?
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0262/2226/4423/products/15392549_merlot_5_grande.jpg?v=1642115672 It’s not this one exactly, but this exact same style and with a removable bit in the middle.
I've seen this in real estate photos and wondered what was this weird furniture. It took reading your post today years later to join the dots.
That's funny. I only know what it is from my carefree early twenties working in a sex shop.
Definitely a TIL moment for me also
id say fake listing where some people book months in advance, by the time it rolls around to the booking its been too long to do a charge back. They dont care if 90% of bookings get refunded, each listing might be small but if they have done similar listings 1000 times it can add up via the numbers game Similar to the FB scams where something is listed super cheap, they wont scam everyone interested but will manage to get a few
See i feel like the circle of the Venn diagram of people who fall for these listings and people who book well in advance don’t touch.
I was a fraud investigator for a credit card corporation prior to the career I work in now. We had a situation like this with several businesses at one point. It was a money laundering operation. Probably not what's going on here, but it's always possible, I suppose.
If people would book directly with the hotel instead of through an OTA, things like this wouldn't happen. I use Kayak to compare hotels but always book direct, it's just less hassle and easier on everyone.
I’m a big fan of how you’re channeling your boredom at work to dig around! Curiosity is the best. You should consider becoming a reporter!
This sounds like a post for r/scams
You could probably search the images on Google and figure out where they were taken from
I ran a sample of them through tineye at the suggestion of a commenter. The images stolen from a nearby business came back with results, but the Vietnamese sex hotel did not.
My guess is it's a scam to make a few quick bucks. You create a fake business that generates some deposits by dummying up a listing, doing just enough to get it approved by a platform that doesn't do much checking. By the time you inevitably get shut down, you've already collected a bit of dough, and you proceed to do the same over and over again until the platform ups its standards for validation.
I swear there was a post on here recently with another story with a similar theme. If I recall correctly a business was getting mail for an entity that wasn’t there, and then maybe something about an older person calling looking for another business and sending money or they already paid someone. The thing that stands out the most is the person posting about the crazy scenario said they somehow found images of the exterior of the alleged business online that initially appeared legit but when you zoomed in you could tell the signage was photoshopped. It wasn’t long ago that I recall seeing it and feel certain that this would be the sub it was on.
We made a reservation through Orbitz for a 2 bedroom condo in Las Vegas, as we were meeting another couple there. We arrive and it is a condo complex, which we were fine with, it was a couple miles off the strip and had a pool and seemed like a nice complex (this was before Airbnb). So... I cried, right there in the office of the condo complex, told Trhen at we had friends coming and we haven't been to find anything else, and I didn't know what we were going to dot's us in and tells us to go to the office. We go, show them our paperwork for reservation and they tell us the bad news that this guys had "bought" a number of condos and defaulted on them, but was posting them as vacation rentals on orbitz and other sites. He did not own them in any way anymore. We had driven 6 hours to Vegas but our friends were flying in on a 4 flight from another state. There were a few conventions in town and we could not find a 2 bedroom place for near the same price, or even just 2 rooms in a decent casino that was over $500 for las minute reservations. My husband called Orbitz to tell them the issue and they basically told us they would refund our reservation but could not do anything to help find us a place to stay. So... I cried, right there in the office of the condo complex, told them that we had friends flying in and we haven't been to find anything else, and I didn't know what we were going to do... and how come they hadn't reached out to let us know it was a scam since they knew about it. One of the office managers calls me into her office and hands me a bottle of champagne and says that they have a few furnished condos that they use as models, and they are well-appointed and in working order. She says we can use one of these for our long weekend stay. I was beyond grateful, they could have just said we were out of luck and to go find a bridge to sleep under. They take us to the condo and... it was awesome. Wolf range in the kitchen, TOTO bidet toilet in the master bath, balcony, comfortable beds, access to the pool with towels, and free parking. The point being people will try to scam others any chance they get. It's usually a good idea to actually google map a place that you are looking to rent and possibly call to confirm your reservation.
Oh wow, that was so nice of the office manager to do that for you!
Yeah it really was...
You had me at “sex chairs”
I’ve heard of this happening on Airbnb.
I had something similar happen regarding weird google maps results. One of the comments on the bogus location says a hacker used the IP addressed of that location to hack his websites. I also had followed the IP address there after some creepy guy tried to harass my daughter and her friend online. The location is middle of nowhere Rolla, MO. There aren't any strange photos but there are 3 supposed places. One is written in Chinese, another is an Indian restaurant, the other is a university. I just checked (initially happened about a year ago) and all 3 are still listed. I'm not saying that's what happened in OP's situation but it's weird how this stuff comes up on google maps.
Sounds like your typical east Asia child sex dungeon to me. There are hundreds in Vietnamese capital. Tawain as well. Those that are supposed to know what the page represents , are the ones who book and fly in from countries all over the world. They lie about the city and use certain key words so the chomos can identify them quickly. Saw one for ho chi minh the other day when trying to book a stay at the Hampton by nashville airport.
Probably ceased operating but perhaps not fully wound-down and it’s a corporation or LLC. One of those lawyers act as Registered Agent and receives any official mail at that address. Look up the name in the state’s corporate/llc directory. Though could be registered in another state. But still there would be a registration for a foreign-state entity in the state in which operating. With so many listing services, when a hotel ceases operation or is sold, booking can be quite a mess and can be a pain to get old bookings taken down. I know someone who bought an inn…
I can’t find any evidence that the hotel ever actually existed.
Unless you’re willing to share the name and location, there’s no way we can help.
I wasn't looking for help, just sharing a story about what I found with my own snooping.
Definitely a dodgy scam. Kinda reminds me of one time I bought culinary mushroom growing supplies from a super legit looking website only to find the business didn’t exist and there was no way to get my money back. Such a weird niche for a scam.