Beware of fake Ads on Vacation Timeshare Rentals site

[Mauiwmn]

Fellow Tuggers, it is a shame that people continue to misuse the rental web sites. People that don't have anything to rent but just want to gather your personal information or obtain a deposit for a week they don't have.

Make sure you follow DeniseM's suggestions for renting from other owners.

I think most Tuggers would be able to spot the fake ads but it is the inexperienced renter that might have trouble sorting out the legitimate owners who are attempting to honestly rent their weeks from the fake ones.

This is what I experienced recently.

I inquired about an Ad for WKORN for a rental for September. Owner listed as Sean in Florida. I asked several questions and the person responded by repeatedly asking me for my full name, address and cell phone number so they could complete a rental contract.

I asked for confirmation of ownership and they said they would not provide until contract was signed. They stated they were the owner.

There were other red flags in my communications with this party. Broken English, vague on details, email address hidden. Their cancellation policy did not make any sense, way too generous. Found email address of
timesharerentals0@gmail.com. Sean and Patricia McCreery

When I questioned further, they just answered "pretty clear" and stopped responding.

I believe they were trolling for personal information and/or trying to secure a 50% deposit for a week they would never deliver.

I went to vacation timeshare rentals to report my concerns and the ad had been removed, literally within minutes of my last email from the party.

Be vigilant and confirm you are dealing with the actual unit owner or their representative. Follow your instincts.

It's a shame that these few fake parties attempt to mislead and possibly steal from us. The vast majority of ads are legitimate. I have come across just a few ads that I felt were fake over the past few years. 1 on Redweek and 3 on Vacation Timeshare Rentals.

Rent from a fellow Tugger!

 

[Luvtravel12]

Timeshare Scam

I also just dealt with the same people using the same email address of timesharerentals0@gmail.com, but using the different name of Malcom and Cindy Townsend. They were advertising a week rental at the Marriott Crystal Shores in Marco Island. Buyer beware!

 

[Mauiwmn]

Glad you weren't fooled either.

I figured they would simply change their names.

Thanks for the update.

 

[twinmommy19]

Yes - we also had this issue with them. Tried to rent a unit at Marriott Mountainside last winter. They had it listed for $1,800 and told us we could prorate and take it for only 5 nights. This alone was fishy as I had offered a seller on red-week $2,100 for the same week - an early January week - not MLK or Sundance week. I had even prefaced that by explaining that we didn't need the two weekend nights so the seller could keep those and try to rent to someone else - not sure if Marriott even allows that? We were using our free Hyatt CC nights over the weekend to stay at the Escala Lodge. Anyway - the redweek poster politely declined and held firm to the $3,000 listing price.

Anyway - The contract those scam artists sent over was complete garbage. They did not even get the layout of Marriott Mountainside correct, which was the telling sign. When I insisted on paying through the escrow system offered by the website the seller vanished from thin air. We ended up renting from directly from an owner on homeaway for those nights instead as we felt 3K was just too much to pay for 5 nights. Marriott Mountainside is much nicer than where we stayed though so maybe it was a mistake.

 

[ronparise]

I also just dealt with the same people using the same email address of timesharerentals0@gmail.com, but using the different name of Malcom and Cindy Townsend. They were advertising a week rental at the Marriott Crystal Shores in Marco Island. Buyer beware!

Are you saying Cindy Townsend is the scam artist or that somebody is using Cindys name?

Cindy runs an honest rental agency

 

[twinmommy19]

Id imagine these scam artists are using the names of legit selling agencies to try to gain respect. The one we dealt with did not use their real name either. The advice on TUG to use escrow until the rental clears is the solution to go with.

On redweek, I think you are probably okay as long as you don't rent from a first time poster. We rented in Aruba at the Marriott without escrow but the seller had at least 15 other active postings and was a member for years so we figured it was okay. No problems.

 

[Mauiwmn]

I also just dealt with the same people using the same email address of timesharerentals0@gmail.com, but using the different name of Malcom and Cindy Townsend. They were advertising a week rental at the Marriott Crystal Shores in Marco Island. Buyer beware!

Where did you see their ad?

 

[Mauiwmn]

Yes - we also had this issue with them. Tried to rent a unit at Marriott Mountainside last winter. They had it listed for $1,800 and told us we could prorate and take it for only 5 nights. This alone was fishy as I had offered a seller on red-week $2,100 for the same week - an early January week - not MLK or Sundance week. I had even prefaced that by explaining that we didn't need the two weekend nights so the seller could keep those and try to rent to someone else - not sure if Marriott even allows that? We were using our free Hyatt CC nights over the weekend to stay at the Escala Lodge. Anyway - the redweek poster politely declined and held firm to the $3,000 listing price.

Anyway - The contract those scam artists sent over was complete garbage. They did not even get the layout of Marriott Mountainside correct, which was the telling sign. When I insisted on paying through the escrow system offered by the website the seller vanished from thin air. We ended up renting from directly from an owner on homeaway for those nights instead as we felt 3K was just too much to pay for 5 nights. Marriott Mountainside is much nicer than where we stayed though so maybe it was a mistake.

Do you recall where you saw their ad?

 

[twinmommy19]

http://www.vacationtimesharerentals...Park-City/Marriott-MountainSide-at-Park-City/

This was the original site where we found the rental. Some of the rentals may be legitimate. We complained to the website about it, but it must be impossible to track these people as they just relist under a different name / identity. See how it shows ones that rented for $1,895? And others that are cheap and say you can rent anytime? Generally as it gets closer to season - cheap listings appear on this site. I had seen them before, but only last year had the guts to try it. Fortunately, the website does offer a legitimate escrow service as an intermediary between buyer and seller. The minute we mentioned using this, the seller disappeared.

Now obviously, I only know for sure that the one we tried to rent was bogus. So maybe some of the others are real deal, but I highly doubt it. I guess take the fact that a real owner on red week turned down my offer for $2,100 for what it's worth. We went the week of January 6th - 13th - it wasn't even highest peak time.

 

[Mauiwmn]

That is the same site I found my bogus ad- Vacation Timeshare Rentals.

There are many legitimate ads on this site. I even use it myself to post ads for rental for my extra weeks. I have found lately that I get far fewer responses to my ads then in the past at this site.

I think the problem is that this site offers 5 free ads. So the scammers don't have to pay anything to run their fake ads at Vacation Timeshare Rentals.

At Redweek & TUG you have an annual membership fee to join so this must be some what of a deterrent. And Redweek charges for their ads as well.

 

[Luvtravel12]

Do you recall where you saw their ad?

I also saw their ad on vacationtimesharerentals.com. I became suspicious when they requested to have payment up front, before i would see a contract. I asked them to email me a copy of the contract and about using an escrow service. They refused both. When I responded that they didn't seem legitimate they sent me an email swearing at me!

 

[Luvtravel12]

Are you saying Cindy Townsend is the scam artist or that somebody is using Cindys name?

Cindy runs an honest rental agency

I believe it is a made up name. I'm guessing they change the name often.

 

[tschwa2]

Many owners here on TUG don't like to use escrow services but every legitimate renter should be able to provide a contract or renters agreement listing terms and conditions before any money is sent.

I liked VacationTimesharerentals as an alternative to the other recommended sites especially for lower priced rentals at independent resorts and still have a few active ads. I am hoping that they can clean up the junk ads and attract enough legitimate people looking to rent and purchase rentals.

 

[twinmommy19]

My seller sent a contract before I paid when I insisted on this. However, we've stayed at Marriott Mountainside before so we became suspicious when the sleep arrangements described in the contract were not a layout that Mountainside has. That's when we requested payment through escrow and never heard from the seller again.

I think the thing with rentals on TUG and redweek that makes them MUCH safer is the fact that you can track the user's posting history (how active they've been / how long they've been members, etc.) to get a sense if they are legit. Granted, there is always a marginal risk of some jerk setting up an account, building a reputation on TUG and then pulling a scam, but that would take a lot of effort, to MAYBE pull off a scam one time if they are lucky. The minute a buyer identifies a scam the user name would be banned and they'd have to start the process of building a reputation all over again. Plus pay the $15 fee again as someone mentioned. That seems like a lot of work for the trouble. And they may not even pull off the scam before someone catches on. It's easier to just post free ads on other site like vacation rentals, craigslist, etc. and continually change your user name when the site catches on to the scam. That takes almost no time and effort on their part.

 

[twinmommy19]

Should note that we've rented before without using escrow, and do not usually feel the need to do this if renting from an established owner on TUG or redweek.

I don't think I would ever rent from the vacation rental site without it though after our experience. The only exception might be if the seller agreed to participate in a 3 way call where I was the one making the phone call to the resort to verify that the seller is in fact a legitimate owner of the property. Perhaps this sounds excessive, and probably is for lower end rentals - but when your shelling out a lot of money for a high end rental like Mountainside and there is no track history to verify who the seller is - I don't think it's unreasonable. If the seller is legitimate, this should not be a problem as the call would take a few minutes of time.

 

[Mauiwmn]

I have rented weeks from other owners and I have rented my own weeks.
I have always rented from someone on TUG or Redweek for the reasons mentioned in other posts here. You can get a feel for the person by reading their posts, etc.

I have never used escrow myself. I have always used PayPal and never had a problem at either end of the rental process. PalPay confirms identity at both ends of the transaction. I'm not saying it can't be an issue but it would be more difficult to scam someone using PayPal.

I think this is good information for others to consider. Especially to be very careful with ads on Vacation Timeshare Rentals.

 

[HenryT]

I am one of those owners who will not use escrow. I did it once without issue but I rented a unit I owned in St Maarten 7 months prior to the check-in date. I was not able to receive payment until 30 days after the check-out date. So it took 8 months before I could receive payment and that is not acceptable to me.

As you all know, risk goes both ways. As an owner renting a lot of weeks I get a fair number of scam artists. Recently I received an email from someone who said they wanted to rent a unit from me but they wanted me to text information to their cell phone (I don't think so!) with the rental details. I emailed back asking them for their address and phone number so I could add it to the rental agreement prior to sending it to them. Of couse I did not hear back from them. Funny thing is the next day I received and email from a person with the same phone number asking about another property I had for rent. This time they gave a different name but they still wanted me to text the information to them.

I also received an email from a guy who wanted to rent my unit at Grande Ocean. He said he was an owner with the week prior to my week. He wanted to stay for 2 consecutive weeks, the first week in his unit and the second week in my unit. He wanted me to send him a copy of my deed so he could verify what week I owned so he could determine what the view was. This was strange because if he was an owner he would know that it didn't matter what my deeded week was. Units are assigned at check-in and the unit he would get would most likely not be my deeded week. He asked me this again, and I repeated to him that I don't understand why he felt he needed to see my deed. If I was selling my unit I would understand.

He finally stated that he also wanted to verify that I owned the unit. My position on this is if all he wanted to know was whether I owned the unit or not he should have said that up front without sending me on a tangent. I keep my deed in my safe deposit box at my bank and I don't see the need to provide it to a renter. I explained to him that If he paid a deposit via Paypal using his credit card I would have a confirmation from the resort to him within 48 hours. If I did not follow through all he needed to do was dispute it with his credit card company and the charge would be removed. He responded that he still wanted to see my deed. I decided that with no money in hand it was not worth it. He seemed legitimate but I think he was overly concerned about being scamed.

I get many requests from people stating they want to rent a unit and after I send them a rental agreement I never hear from them again so I am not willing to go through undue hoops before I know the person is serious about renting. The above guy found my ad in Redweek. He can easily determine that I have been renting units through Redweek for years with no negative feedback.

So I think people who want to rent timeshares should understand that owners also have to deal with many scam artists and waste a lot of time with people who have no intention of renting. Both sides have to be willing to take some risk and using a credit card to rent is not a big risk when you would be getting your confirmation from the resort within a few days after you submit your payment.

 

[SueDonJ]

... I also received an email from a guy who wanted to rent my unit at Grande Ocean. He said he was an owner with the week prior to my week. He wanted to stay for 2 consecutive weeks, the first week in his unit and the second week in my unit. He wanted me to send him a copy of my deed so he could verify what week I owned so he could determine what the view was. This was strange because if he was an owner he would know that it didn't matter what my deeded week was. Units are assigned at check-in and the unit he would get would most likely not be my deeded week. He asked me this again, and I repeated to him that I don't understand why he felt he needed to see my deed. If I was selling my unit I would understand. ...

Marriott deeds don't indicate just the floating season owned but also the unit/view type owned (with only some OceanWatch and SurfWatch Weeks excepted because of their "Ultimate Occupancy" possibilities,) so I can understand why he'd want to see your deed prior to renting from you. Not to confirm what Week is indicated on your deed because it's a floating season and owners aren't guaranteed any certain weeks, but to verify the unit/view type you own at Grande Ocean because as someone renting from an owner he'd be placed as if he is the owner.

(Sorry for going off-topic a bit here ...)

 

[HenryT]

Marriott deeds don't indicate just the floating season owned but also the unit/view type owned (with only some OceanWatch and SurfWatch Weeks excepted because of their "Ultimate Occupancy" possibilities,) so I can understand why he'd want to see your deed prior to renting from you. Not to confirm what Week is indicated on your deed because it's a floating season and owners aren't guaranteed any certain weeks, but to verify the unit/view type you own at Grande Ocean because as someone renting from an owner he'd be placed as if he is the owner.

(Sorry for going off-topic a bit here ...)

The view type was not an issue. There are only two real view types. I told him my unit was not oceanfront and if he wanted oceanfront he needed to find another unit. My deed I believe just says ocean side for the view category. Though they have recently changed the view definitions you would not see those changes on the deed.

The only reason to see the deed for this resort would be if the owner told you their unit was oceanfront and you wanted to verify that you were actually getting oceanfront. This guy knew he would not be getting oceanfront.

 

[twinmommy19]

Here's the deal TUG members. There was a post on this string yesterday morning that the moderators had strip by a new member "SweetHomeVacations". The post said "good to know - thanks for the information!". The scam attempt on us in Park City cam from a sweethome.com email address. Only the scammer himself would know this. And the poster knew his "scam victims" would recognize the name. So clearly he was bating us, and the message is simple. What I suggested before about checking to see posting history on TUG is probably not good enough alone to ensure a safe rental. TUG was able to ban this guy from their site, but what's to stop him from setting up a different user name? It could happen, and he could take our "advice" and try to build up a reputation on sites like this one. So the message here is - nothing is completely safe but here are some ideas of things you can do as a renter:

1) A scammer can create a TUG account (and even pay the $15 fee to join) and can even do the work to read old strings to learn about resorts to post intelligent things. it would be much harder to fake a history of having rented to other reputable TUG members. If you have doubts, ask the TUG user you plan to rent from for references of other TUG members they've rented to in the past. A simple PM will verify that.

2) The internet is a great, quick and easy way to verify that the person posting the ad is who they say they are. Sure, some people are not listed in the phone book, but a lot are. If your renter is listed, make sure you make at least one phone call to the number that matches the listing. When the phone number listed is for a real estate brokerage company you can always ask on TUG to get information about whether others have used the place before.

3) Finally - if the user is renting for the first time (or for whatever reason can't produce TUG references) and also does not have a listing in the phone book that can be verified, my personal next step would be to ask the seller if he/she would mind participating in a quick 3 way call to verify they are an owner at the resort. Yes - you could also ask to see a deed, but papers can be made up. If I'm the renter, and I'm physically the one dialing Marriott on the phone with the owner on the line as well, that's pretty solid proof. I don't see why a person renting his unit for the first time would object to this. If they did, I personally would take that as a red flag.

Of course, sometimes the cost isn't that great to begin with and you may decide to take a chance.

 

[Mauiwmn]

Wow! Good work to catch this.

It appears the scammers are getting bolder and they have discovered TUG.

Thank you for all the great information. Hopefully, we can continue to expose the scammers on TUG.

 

[theo]

Howzzat???

<snip> On redweek, I think you are probably okay as long as you don't rent from a first time poster. We rented in Aruba at the Marriott without escrow but the seller had at least 15 other active postings and was a member for years so we figured it was okay. <snip>

I'm confused by your above RedWeek comments, highlighted in red, since the length of time of a RedWeek membership is not actually indicated anywhere on the RedWeek site, nor is there (to my knowledge) really any way on the RedWeek site to determine that someone placing RedWeek ads is a "first time poster" there.

Can you explain or elaborate further -- or am I just missing or misunderstanding something here?

 

[twinmommy19]

I'm confused by your above RedWeek comments, highlighted in red, since the length of time of a RedWeek membership is not actually indicated anywhere on the RedWeek site, nor is there (to my knowledge) really any way on the RedWeek site to determine that someone placing RedWeek ads is a "first time poster" there.

What I meant was that the seller we rented from had many active listings. Also - I was watching the prices for a while at the time before renting waiting to see if an exchange would come through II for one of the Marriott's in Aruba for July 4th. We confirmed a studio using an AC but needed another unit and didn't feel it was worth it to use a real exchange for a studio. Seeing how many rental units there were we figured one would be available and the price might even come down at the last minute if we didn't get the exchange. And it did come down - we got a great deal! Anyway - I had watched multiple weeks turn over by this seller over the course of many months in that case.

In general - having multiple listings on a site like redweek makes a seller less suspect to scam in my opinion. Doesn't each listing cost $25 plus the membership fee (not sure maybe it's cheaper if you have a lot of them)? You have to figure that on sites like TUG or redweek, a user is only likely to be able to get away with one scam maximum before getting booted off so paying hundreds of dollars to list properties probably wouldn't fit the bill. Nor would a scam seller be likely to last long enough under the same ID.

 

[MuranoJo]

What I meant was that the seller we rented from had many active listings. Also - I was watching the prices for a while at the time before renting waiting to see if an exchange would come through II for one of the Marriott's in Aruba for July 4th. We confirmed a studio using an AC but needed another unit and didn't feel it was worth it to use a real exchange for a studio. Seeing how many rental units there were we figured one would be available and the price might even come down at the last minute if we didn't get the exchange. And it did come down - we got a great deal! Anyway - I had watched multiple weeks turn over by this seller over the course of many months in that case.

In general - having multiple listings on a site like redweek makes a seller less suspect to scam in my opinion. Doesn't each listing cost $25 plus the membership fee (not sure maybe it's cheaper if you have a lot of them)? You have to figure that on sites like TUG or redweek, a user is only likely to be able to get away with one scam maximum before getting booted off so paying hundreds of dollars to list properties probably wouldn't fit the bill. Nor would a scam seller be likely to last long enough under the same ID.

Some of us who rent our weeks don't really make it a 'business'--we might just rent a week we don't use in a particular year, or perhaps we have multiple weeks but just use one as a rental (my case). Rather than base trust on the # of weeks advertised, I'd use the sticky suggestions and also base a lot on the trust you establish in the communications you have with the person who placed the ad.

 

[twinmommy19]

Yes of course. You can get a sense in the back and forth dialogue and sometimes dont need to take additional steps. The suggestions i made are for a nervous renter who for whatever reason just doesnt feel sure.

Most owners who rent on redweek are going to be people who either rent for a business OR have an active TUG account. And if not, the renter may have a listed phone number somewhere that you could actually call them at to verify they are who they say they are. Nothing is full proof, but these are all things that add a layer of comfort. If a renter is still not sure they can also try calling the resort and asking if the person is an owner. This worked for us with our first rental but it was a very small place. The larger hotel franchises may not be willing to give this information. The bottom line is a 3 way call to the resort takes 5 minutes to verify ownership. I don't see why this should be such a big deal for an owner if requested.