“Accommodations are uploaded with stolen or AI photographs and an eye-catching price”

You are looking for a hotel for your vacation and you come across the perfect ad: well located, with everything you are looking for and at an incredible price. However, shortly after the bubble burst: The accommodation does not exist and you have been scammed. It’s not fiction, it’s what many travelers find on their vacations. It’s called a ‘ghost vacation rental’ and In summer the risk of suffering from it increases.

Scammers know well what people are looking for on platforms like Booking or Airbnb and create ads to attract our attention: “their accommodations usually meet exactly what you are looking for, but at a much better price,” says Jordi Nebot, CEO of Paynopaina Spanish fintech specialized in payment solutions. Additionally, they often use “stolen or AI photos” that make the ads look more credible.

Anatomy of the vacation rental thymus

Once they get our interest, what follows is the psychological pressure. Scammers “always try to introduce that sense of urgency to put the victim in a dilemma”, such as “a message from the owner telling you ‘I only have one room left, make the reservation now or you will be left with nothing'”. They play with the card of high demand, because yes, “the scams change depending on the season. In summer they get very busy with the vacation theme,” says Jordi.

The next step is the one that should set off all the alarms: “They will usually tell you to leave the platform.” The excuse they usually give is that They can give us a much better pricebut this is where we can have real problems because “they look for ways to make you pay by some means by which you lose the dispute protection that the most common payment methods have (…) a transfer, PayPal or Bizum, are payment methods in which once you have sent the money, the only way you have to recover it is to take the person you have spoken to to court.”

chow to spot a fake ad

The first clue is the price. An offer well below the area average is not definitive proof, but it is the first warning sign. The second, much more reliable, is the lack of history: “scams have very short legs. Normally the platforms eliminate the ad within a few days.” That is, if someone reports it, Booking or Airbnb will take it down quickly. That’s why heFraudulent ads almost never accumulate reviews or age.

A real accommodation leaves more traces outside the platforms, like “a website, a telephone, a location that you can find on Google Maps.” If you have doubts about the legitimacy of an ad, it is best to “look for that accommodation and see if it has networks, if it has opinions on Trustpilot or on any specialized blog.” If you are still hesitating, Jordi’s advice is blunt: “choose another one, don’t risk it.”

What to do if you have already fallen in a scam

If you have paid within the platform, you are in luck because “you already have coverage with the platform itself.” Just report it to Booking or Airbnb to make the refund. If you have paid outside the platform, the steps to follow will depend on the payment method you used.

If you paid by card, your bank also offers you protection. In this case you will have to file a report with the police and take it to the bank to file a dispute. It is normally resolved in a few days, although it can take up to 45, but it is a standardized process that is usually resolved without further setbacks: “It has to be very bad for you to have been a victim of a scam and not get your money back,” says Jordi.

The scenario changes completely if you paid by transfer or another means such as Bizum or PayPal: “You will have to go to the police to report it and the only way to recover it will be through judicial means.” In your experience, it is usually a lost battle: “everything ends up in court and today that is a big problem, because for certain amounts it doesn’t even pay to fight.”

Image | Oberon Copeland @veryinformed.com in Unsplash

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