
I had been hearing rumors of vacation rentals having all their contents stolen and it appears that it has just happened to an owner in Reunion.
The scam is very simple to perform when the booking agent has no contact with the guest making the reservation. In this particular instance it happened something like this:
- The guest made the booking at the very last minute via Expedia (but it could be any other site) using a fraudulent credit card.
- He then arrived at the house and was shown in.
- At some stage in the next couple of days he cleared out all the major electrical equipment and anything else that took his fancy.
Obviously, once the owners discovered their loss they checked back via the resort and the booking agent and discovered the credit card had been stolen and that they had no genuine contact information for the ‘guest’.
Guess who has to pick up the tab?
This kind of thing can and does happen to anybody so if you are taking last minute bookings make sure you know who you are dealing with.
Allegedly in this instance the guests email address was foolyou@xxxxxxx.xxx which in hindsight was a bit of a clue really.