Same for me in Aalborg. I will give the full info if you're interested.
I saw a message in a Facebook group which was weird because the person that published it was a new account (just name, 2 friends). When contacted she gave me an email to contact for more details.
It was weird but i said, well, maybe it's an agency or something, why not. I contacted and I got the same message more or less coming from Christel Hansen:
Dear (my name)
Good Afternoon,thanks for the prompt in response the flat is Located at Vesterbro 41 9000 Aalborg,Denmark,the Transit is Aalborg ST which is just a few minutes work from the apartment, within walking distance of shops and sights.
It is a well furnished apartment with easy access of transportation.features a living/dining room and 2 bedrooms.The modern kitchen includes a fridge/freezer,stove top,exhaust,microwave,washing machine and dish washer.
The apartment has central heating;double glazed windows and,laminated wood floors.Furniture includes: sofa bed, dining table, 4 dining table chairs,standing light,coffee table,rug,media/TV table,double bed+mattress,two night tables,two table lights,dresser,cupboard,built- in closet,full equipped kitchen(dishes,cutlery, pots, pans,etc.)curtains,blinds and lighting fixtures.There is wireless internet access in the apartment.
The rent for a room is 2500DKK per month including bills and a Security deposit of 4500DKK which is refundable at the end of your stay in the apartment.If you want the whole apartment then the rent will be 7500DKK with the refundable deposit of 9,000DKK.
Internet and all bills are included in the rent,the apartment is available for a long term so it all depends on how long you want to stay in it.
Pictures of the whole apartment are available upon request.
We can also chat on Skype to discuss better,if you have whatsapp on your phone we can chat on it as well .I am an easy going person,i am fun to be with.Feel free to ask me any question if you have got any.I like to
know more about you too.
Thanks i await for your response..
Best Regards,
Christel
I didn't notice at first the problem with the upper/lower cases but still it seemed fine apart from the fact that seemed to good to be true.
Anyway, I was still believing in it. I give her my whatsapp and we talk and it seems ok, she sends me the pictures which again look to good to be true but well why not, I know some friends with really good cheap flats in Aalborg, not as good though.
So, i ask her that since I'm not in Denmark I could maybe only pay a little amount in advance to show that I will go to the flat, but since I'm not there theres no way I'm paying deposit+month. She says how much and I say half a month. That's where I started suspecting. You may say yes or no or whatever, but she replied with "haha. Listen, (my name) the room is not imposed on you. That is an insult to my personality". That's when it clicked, no normal person would take it that personally. It's a normal situation, you're abroad it's normal not to want to risk that much money and trust an stranger, it's the normal thing to do, not the opposite, but the way she replied it was clear she was trying to make me think that it was bad on my part. She was willing to send me her passport and proof of electrical bills but I didn't accept.
Then I said, maybe a friend of mine could go there one day and I would be more willing to pay full. Then she said that as she had previously said (she hadn't) she was out of town (how convenient, right?) until 18th of August.
I continued thinking, well the room is really nice, and maybe I don't know, let's try to continue working on this, if I come up with some idea to make it work in both parts I may do it. And that was the good thing, I thought about using the photos of the house to prove that it was a scam. You could see the street from the windows and there were clearly 2 different white houses. I used StreetView and I didn't find 2 different white houses, only one at the very least which was actually more like yellowish. So I asked her to be sure if that was the house and she said yes. From that moment I was pretty sure it was a scam.
Anyway, now that I was convinced I decided to look for "house rent scam" or something like that just to see other cases and I came to this very page with the same mail. I should have just searched fragments of the e-mail in the first time.
Anyway, as an advice don't trust anyone. If something seems too good, it may be for a reason. Check for weird spelling mistakes due to copy pasting, and weird responses. Try looking for fragments of the messages online, ....
I'm lucky that I have another guy which accepts my money on hand (no bank transfer before or anything like that) the day of the arrival. I think that's what a normal person would do in a situation where you're outside the country and you can't physically check the place.
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