Online Scam to enhance hotel search results on booking engines
Get rich quick scam. This is how they operate:
You are getting contacted on WhatsApp by a recruiter with an Indian number who falsely claims to be from a reputable local in this case European headhunting7 staffing company. They offer a full-time/part-time position. Once you confirm your interest, the hiring manager contacts you by WhatsApp and explains that the role involves Search Engine Optimization to enhance the visibility of certain hotels on booking platforms by leaving customer reviews. No phone interview/ all communication via chat. The hiring manager conducts "training" by providing access to a platform where you select pre-written reviews that are supposedly posted.
The interesting part is that there is money involved (without obvious reasons) and it is more set up like a casino, while you cannot win.
This is how it works:
You get an initial balance so you can start providing the "reviews". They assign a batch of 40 reviews to you. Once you start it, you cannot stop or cancel. Before you submit a review, it shows you a room rate, for example, USD 95. You submit the review, and you get 0,5% (USD 0,48) of this amount added to your balance. Once in a while, you get "lucky" because you get a combo. This means you get 6%, but the room rate is not USD 95, but 395. So your balance becomes negative and you cannot proceed. They are asking you to top off the balance, so it becomes at least 0 so you can proceed. The first time, you are adding just a few USD, but this is when they try to hook you. The room rates depend on your balance. so whenever you are starting a batch you have an exponential rate increase. Every time you complete a batch, you need to contact customer service to "reset" you account. You think that you keep it low key and start with a minimum balance that they gave you firsthand. Customer Service gives you the already your "salary" of e.g. USD 599 for 2 days of work when they reset you and there is no way you can cash this out before starting your batch. Within a few minutes, you run into exorbitant negative balances. So you need to add thousands of USD tho get your money back. And even then you can be sure you get lucky with a combo on the 39th task.
As the other reviewer said, they try to engage you with a WhatsApp group where everyone shares screenshots of all the money they made and that there is a limited-time offer to get extra bonuses as the company celebrates its birthday.
This is from the scammer's best-practice handbook.
The company is called Stratify Limited and they pretend to be working for or with hotelscombined. You will find other reviews in the hotelscombined review section.