Booking.com still no refund after five months after booking *****ulent property through booking.com

We made a booking through Booking.com, based on the photos on booking.com's app, in November 2024 for January 2025 at Moja Tu The Luxury Villas, Zanzibar. We've now decided to turn to Hello Peter after numerous months of e-mails between us and booking.com and booking.com just leaving the matter and hoping it would go away.

When we arrived in Zanzibar, we went to have a look at the property as we wanted to check in two days earlier, and to our shock, we found the place to be an absolute dump. We immediately made contact with the manager of the resort, that said a refund is not possible, as well as booking.com which to this date have not refunded our money. We have sent all the photos as evidence to booking.com and booking.com agreed with us on everything we said about the resort and the property's been removed from booking.com's site since then BUT booking.com does not want to give us a refund as it was a non-refundable booking. We understand a non-refundable booking; if we didn't want to stay there, by all means, we understand but we COULDN'T stay there as it was a health risk! Mildew growing on the curtains with two day old baked beans in some container at the breakfast room, dirt everywhere, broken furniture, an absolute dump. It was not us that didn't fulfil this agreement - this is ***** taking our money for a place where we COULDN'T stay and that was falsely advertised to us. We booked this under false pretences through booking.com. If the property does not want to give the money back, that is not our problem, that is between booking.com and Moja Tuu. Booking.com should have better procedures in place to make sure properties look like the photos that are posted - the customer can't pay for this! And now, after our $603 outing, the property is removed from booking.com's site to avoid any further bookings at this *****ulent property. This just further proves our case that it was a *****ulent booking. As mentioned, all the evidence was sent to booking.com, even a screenshot from Moja Tuu's computer showing all the cancelled bookings there. Come on booking.com, you can't take our money like this and have us pay for your mistakes. Please, we have used your site for many years and have even done so after this incident. Please refund our $603. We've been struggling for five months now to get this resolved. It's totally unfair.