BOOKING.COM ****!!!

In January my family and i decided to book a place for a night and so we decided to use the booking.com app to find a good place We found a good place in Umhlanga called 'STERLING GUESTHOUSE' which we booked and paid for via the app for the amount of R16,300 (it was for 7 adults and 2 kids),only to find out that it was a **** and the place never existed,we drove around for approximately two hours late at night with kids in the car as well . we met with a patrolling security vehicle and consulted with him about this and was then informed that we were not the first to have this experience. We had to drive around to so many different hotels to get a place to stay the night as it was really late and the kids were asleep in the car and we were far from home . We eventually found a hotel which was not fully booked . I tried contacting booking.com numerous times regarding this and was always told that they would investigate the matter ,note:i still haven't received any response back from them till now neither was i refunded my R16,300! also HOW can booking.com not verify and ensure the places they add to their app/site are legit ???

We eventually had to try as hard as we