False Summer Rentals Clues

Reasons for suspicion:

Very cheap prices compared to the average for the area.

attractive description.

Attractive photos: These may have been stolen from other listings, interior decorating pages, or photo buying platforms.

The advertiser claims to live abroad and uses an intermediary for payment or delivery of the keys to the residence.

If you are planning your vacation online and want to rent an accommodation, you should pay special attention to vacation rental scams, which multiply at times when there are a greater number of reservations, such as summer, Christmas or Week Santa.

In this article we will tell you what vacation scams are, which are the most common and how to identify and prevent them.

What are vacation scams?

Vacation scams are a type of deception in which criminals advertise a tourist home or other type of accommodation, which may or may not exist, and which generally shows sensational condition, a prime location and a price below indicated by the market, to attract the attention of users. The objective is usually to keep the money that the victim pays to make the reservation.

Common Vacation Rental Scams

Not all vacation rental scams are the same. In fact, criminals have been sharpening their wits to come up with new ways to trick users. These are the most common:

Insecure payments outside the platforms. The lessor can offer the client the possibility of making the payment outside the online platform in exchange for a substantial discount, with the excuse of avoiding some type of fee on the platform. However, the goal is to get money.

Advances in the payment of the reservation. If you have ever used Booking or Airbnb to reserve a vacation rental, you will have noticed that you are never asked for an amount per reservation. In the event that the landlord requests a payment via Bizum or bank transfer in exchange for reserving the home for the dates you have requested, be wary. It is most likely a scam.

Vacation rental homes that do not exist. In these cases, the landlord usually tells the user that they are out of town or even out of the country at the time they request their reservation. For this reason, he asks you to pay him in advance and to send him the keys by mail, leave them in the mailbox or give them to him through an intermediary, which ultimately does not happen.

False complaints. It is important that, the moment you set foot inside your vacation rental, you check the house for any damage. Take photos of the ones you find and send them to both the platform and the landlord. The reason? If you do not do it, the landlord may say that it was you who caused them so that you pay the penalty established in the contract.

Identity fraud. Emails or SMS with false ads impersonating well-known rental platforms and with very attractive offers.

The objective of these attacks is to steal personal and banking information (email accounts and passwords, credit card numbers, etc.) in order to continue committing other frauds. Never trust links that lead to login pages or personal data forms.

Identify a vacation scam

While spotting vacation rental scams may seem easy, criminals try to keep them as inconspicuous as possible and sometimes succeed.

Therefore, here you have a series of recommendations that will allow you to identify vacation scams when you are ready to book an accommodation.

excessively cheap price

If the accommodation you are interested in has very good features but is priced well below the average price for the area in which it is located, it may be a vacation scam. To find out the average amount of a stay in your destination, vacation rental booking platforms provide you with tools such as interactive maps with accommodation prices, which makes it easier to identify this type of scam.

Suspicious wording and description

Another aspect that usually betrays cybercriminals is spelling. Some of the descriptive texts that appear in the fake ads contain misspellings or grammatical errors due to the use of machine translators. Also, if the text barely gives detailed information about the property, it may be because that accommodation simply does not exist.

stolen photographs

Typically, scammers use free image banks, Google search images, or other ads posted on vacation rental booking platforms. With this they try to draw attention to the good condition of the house.

If you suspect that it is a scam, you can check if the photos are real. To do this, a good option is to install the Google Lens application on your mobile phone, which performs an online search for any image you capture. In this way, you can find out if it has been taken from an interior design website, from an image bank or from a different advertisement.

Use of intermediaries

The ad may have passed all of the above filters and may appear trustworthy. However, if when you call or send a message to the landlord an intermediary answers, be suspicious, especially if he tells you that you must pay an additional commission to make the reservation.

Vacation rental search platforms act as intermediaries to guarantee the security of the operation. In fact, they keep a percentage of what you pay to offer that service. So what is the point of imposing another similar figure during the process if it is not with the aim of defrauding you? Tips to avoid vacation rental scams

Even if you know how to identify a vacation scam, it is important that you follow these recommendations to avoid falling victim to one.

Be wary of bargains

It is normal that there are bargains, that is, cheaper rentals than usual. They may be because the landlord wants to make themselves known and get good reviews, or simply to occupy some dates that have become free, for example, after a last-minute cancellation.

However, when the price is extraordinarily low compared to other similar accommodations located nearby, it is cause for suspicion.

Check the existence of the accommodation

First of all, check that the address where the ad says the accommodation is actually exists. In addition, you can use the satellite view of your map application to make sure that it is indeed the house that appears in the photographs. You can also check the Land Registry who owns it.

Reliable payment methods

Always use a secure payment method that guarantees the privacy of your data to make your vacation rental reservation, such as a credit or debit card or an electronic wallet. Avoid, above all, paying the amount in cash and never make payments outside of official platforms.

It is also very important to report to the platform as soon as possible that you have detected an advertisement that could be a scam. In this way, you will be helping the site to strengthen its security measures and, above all, you will be preventing other people from being victims of cybercriminals.

With these tips and recommendations for possible vacation rental scams, you can enjoy your trip with greater peace of mind.

We would like to thank Santander for this information (translated).

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Please note: The information provided is based upon our understanding of current legislation. It is not legal advice but is provided freely to enable you to be properly informed. We recommend that if you are considering taking action, you should seek professional advice.