With the arrival of summer, it becomes a very common task to find an apartment or a hotel to rent to spend the holidays with your family or friends. However, you have to be careful, since behind many web portals that rent this type of accommodation there is behind a scam group whose objective is to extract money from people and make scams by phone or other means.
The Telematic Crimes Group of the Civil Guard, through its Twitter account, already detailed a series of tips to help users identify possible scammers and the excuses they always have at hand.
When looking for a vacation rental, do you know how to spot scammers? We tell you how to book your next vacation without being a victim of #cybercrime with @airbnb_es pic.twitter.com/lcSnDYBLsS
– GDT Guardia Civil (@GDTGuardiaCivil) May 4, 2021
6 tricks to know if they are scamming us with the vacation apartment
One of the signs of scam when renting an accommodation is that the owner tells us that he does not live near the apartment . One of the excuses that these scammers usually make is that they are outside, even giving more explanations about why they are abroad, thus gaining the trust of the user. In addition, you can take advantage of this situation to request an international bank transfer.
Another common characteristic is that of sending a contract to rent the property without even having told the landlord of wanting to stay, but with only asking for information. When sending this contract, we will also be asked for a photocopy of the DNI, but this is a way of having our identity stolen , so you have to be very careful.
It is also very common to rush those who want to book accommodation, in order to put pressure and thus make the decision as soon as possible. It is very likely that you will tell us that you need an answer in less than a day or that you are about to rent it to other people. Therefore, if it is a very insistent person, it is most likely a scammer.
Finally, another way to operate these hoaxes is to make believe that they work with AirBNB. If the person repeatedly mentions that they work with this company, it may be suspicious since that is something obvious when trying to make the reservation within this platform.
One way to get the money is also to ask for an economic amount in advance , as if it were a deposit. Make sure that all payments are made through the platform for which the reservation is being made. Under no circumstances should you make any type of payment outside of the application.
If you are still looking for where to spend a few days this summer, we hope that this series of tips will allow you to avoid any type of theft of both identity and money, or troubles, and thus enjoy a well-deserved vacation.