Never pay outside EthioBete

The single most common scam, and how to avoid it.

⚠️ If anyone asks you to pay by bank transfer, mobile money, or any method outside EthioBete — stop. This is the most common way people lose money on booking sites.

It usually sounds reasonable: a discount for paying directly, a story about the site's fees, a claim that the payment page is broken. Once you send money that way:

  • No booking exists. The dates are not held for you.
  • There is nothing to refund, because we never received anything.
  • You have no cancellation cover and no record of what was agreed.

To make this harder, we hide phone numbers, emails and links in messages until a booking is paid for. Someone working around that — spelling a number out in words, for example — is a strong signal to walk away and report them.

Paying through EthioBete costs you nothing extra beyond the fees shown before you book, and it is what makes refunds possible.

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Didn’t answer your question?

Email contact@ethiobete.com — include your booking dates or listing name if it’s about a specific stay.

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EthioBete — book stays across Ethiopia