London Accommodation - cityoflondonhomes

Ricamundo - you have just made my day! Not only because your daughter was saved before losing any money but also that this site belongs to a gang I lost track of! I see they have changed most of their wordings, but the style of the site is irrefutably the same. Thank you very much for reporting!

I am wondering if anyone knows if all the vacation rental offerings for London on Craigs list are scams. It appears that way. I have been looking into renting an apt. for several weeks now, and everyone that I have come across (dozens) has ended up being a scam. I am looking to rent for a month, so the amount at risk is significant. Like others, I first started on some of the legitimate vacation rental sites like VRBO and Vacation rentals.com then a friend recommended craigs list. I was surprised, but pleased to see the significantly lower prices on Craigs list. Seeing the difference in price made me nervous, so I googled "Craigs list Vacation rental scams" and found a few entries, but most were dated and were often about bait and switch issues rather than outright stolen money. I read all the warnings about scams such as direct wiring of funds, bad english, etc, so I proceeded carefully. Like others I saw some pics and listings that I had seen on the legitimate sites, so I knew they were scams, but kept thinking that burried in the scams there had to be some legitimate renters. The first thing I did to winnow out the scammers was to let every one who answered my initial request know that I had a friend in London who would have to visit the unit before I sent money. (I do in fact have someone who was willing to look at them.) 90% of the listings then stopped communicating with me. Finally, I decided I had found one legitimate listing, someone who said my friend could look at it, but only in late Feb. since it was rented until then. I noticed that with each email, his english got worse. I wanted to believe that he might be foreign, but still a legitmate London apt. owner, I'm sure there are many foreigners who have vacation rentals. When I asked him for his name, he told me that it was Peter Wright. That's when I decided that this must once again be a scam. Judging by his English, if this guy was really Peter Wright, he must have dropped out of elementary school. He had been trying to get me to wire my friend the money, send him a copy of the wire info. so that he was sure the funds were in the hands of my friend who could then give him the cash when he looked at the apt. in Feb. Seeing where this was heading, I then emailed him on another email address, asking to rent the place in Jan. and lo and behold, the apt was available, "send money quickly" before it was rented to someone else. Obviously a scam. At this point I don't believe that there are any legitimate vacation rental listings on Craigs list. I emailed them on their scams and fraud connections asking them if they were getting many complaints about foreign vacation rental listings, suggesting that based on my research it would appear to me the the entire category was a scam, questioning their policy of including such a category, and asking them if they could confirm that they were getting a lot of complaints about this. I never heard back from them. I believe that Craigs list is a reputable resource for some searches, but at this point I feel that by overlooking the problems with this and not responding to my email they are just as guilty as the scam artists. I understand the concept of "let the buyer beware" , but if there are no legitimate listings, then including this category of listings knowing that they are all scams is criminal. I offered to give them the names of all the scams I had flushed out. Apparently they aren't interested in getting them. Has any one else had similar problems.????

I was about to book an apartment through londonproperties-uk.co.uk until I found this post and another post on Tripadvisor, where I could see that this must be a scam. The domain has only been registrered for a few days:

Domain name:
londonproperties-uk.co.uk

Registrant:
PEARLYCK MARTIN

Registrant type:
Other UK Entity (e.g. clubs, associations, many universities)

Registrant's address:
111 Westbourne Terrace
LONDON
W2 6QT
United Kingdom

Registrar:
amen ltd t/a Amenworld.com [Tag = AMEN]
URL: http://www.amenworld.com

Relevant dates:
Registered on: 09-Apr-2011
Renewal date: 09-Apr-2013
Last updated: 09-Apr-2011

This is the e-mail I got from the mail "LONDON PROPERTIES AND RENTALS <[email protected]>"

> -----Original Message-----
> From: LONDON PROPERTIES AND RENTALS
> [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: 14. april 2011 11:42
> To: /////////////
> Subject: Newton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2B 5EN
>
> Property: Newton Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2B 5EN
>
> Arrival Date: July 22nd 2011
> Departure Date: August 14th 2011
> Weekly Rent: £220.00 ( Three weeks £660.00 ) Refundable Security
Deposit: £200.00
>
> To book the apartment 60% of the rent rate and the £200 refundable
> security deposit,has to be in advance by bank transfer, the rest 40%
> cash at
arrival.
>
> All bills inclusive, no others fees or taxes.
>
> Attached are the photos.
>
> Regards,
>
> Robert Coleman.

Oh dear god, not those again. You are completely correct - this is a scam. I'm glad to hear you realised it in time

I will make sure that the site gets reported, hopefully it will be offline soon. Thanks a lot for posting here, it may alert many other people!

It looks as if the scammer's going through a course learning web site building and not doing very well at it.

http://www.londonproperties-uk.co.uk/

Another apartment yellowstay is proud to offer:

The scammer should note that it's probably a good idea to remove the name of the company whose web site he copied the ad from, but his problems are much greater than just being unable to copy and paste competently.

Hello.

Just thought I'd give you an update on our situation with Uniqletts. It's all fine - we've had absolutely no problems with them since we moved in.

An earlier poster in this thread mentioned Craigslist and vacation rentals and whether they were all scams. In my experience, I'd say the vast majority are. My girlfriend and I went to New York recently, and were looking for holiday rentals on Craigslist and at least 95% of the replies we had were definite scams, so I'd suggest avoid using it.

We did manage to get an apartment through a website called Airbnb.com which I'd thoroughly suggest. It's international and well worth using in my experience - the company holds your money is escrow until 24 hours after you've moved into the apartment. Only then, when they've heard there haven't been any problems, do they pay the money to the owner of the apartment. They've got some rooms/apartments in London, so those of you looking for holiday accomodation, I suggest you use that.

Hope that helps.

BadgerMuff