by scamssuck
Tue Jun 21, 2011 12:47 pm
Mod note: Research shows eufest.com to be a real and legitimate company. However, interested parties should make their own decisions regarding accomodation and service. - CW
Hi fellow scam-ees/potential scam-ees,
I'm going to Exit festival in Serbia with some friends this summer (7th July-10th July) Really excited, it's my only holiday this year and I've just finished uni so it's a big celebration for us. Obviously want it to go as perfectly as possible for those reasons....
Serbia at this time is meant to be HOT. And the festival finishes in the early hours of the morning, so when you're ready to retire and recharge, you want it to be restful, not boiling... This means that camping is pretty intense (sorry.) Judging by the forums, people who go to Exit for a second time don't camp. They always find a hostel, and this is the general advice that spreads to newbies such as ourselves.
So, being a bit unorganised what with having to complete our degrees, we only recently started looking for hostels in Serbia, and lo and behold, hostelbookers.com and hostelworld.com had no available rooms in the three that they listed. We then started googling madly for anything - hostels/apartments, anything that has a roof that is made from nice, cooling cement or something, rather than sun-soaking nylon. We found one that sounded PERFECT! It was on http://www.eufest.com and this was the hostel http://www.eufest.com/exit/accommodation/detail/274. Brilliant! We're a group of 7, this was less than £10 a night and a 5 minute walk to the festival!? Perfect. So, excitedly, I asked for its availability, and to my huge pleasure they said there was one apartment left all we have to do is go through the booking page and secure the apartment! I quickly went off to do this to find that I needed to pay the full amount straight up. I've never had to pay a full amount for a hostel before. Usually, you pay a deposit and then if you cancel before 24hrs prior to arrival you lose the deposit but that's it, and if you cancel within 24 hours of arrival you lose everything, right? After a lot of emails, where eufest denied me contact to the hostel, and failed to give me an address that matched up to where they said the hostel was, I thought - this sounds suspicious.
We then looked to our alternative options which were slightly more expensive and settled for this one http://exitapartments.net/index.php?opt ... &Itemid=55 15 a night, 15 min walk from exit, really great option too. E-mailed and fantastic news - the apartment was available. Learnt that the price went up to 17 though, but thought, ok never mind it's still cheaper than most, and got the payment information from them. They sent me a document from their bank with loads of information half in serbian, half in english, asking for 50 euros to be paid to the account beneficiary and that I needed to pay through swift. I didn't understand this process but I was desperate so in my lunch break from work today, I ran to the bank to try and sort it out. The bank was really busy though and didn't know how to process this, so put me through two different queues and then the bank phone, and I ran out of time.
I've since been doing some research about serbian apartments and saw on lonelyplanet that people were warning others to not wire money across.. I had no idea paying through "swift" is a process of wiring money (so if this is a scam - thank you halifax for being too busy to deal with me in the whole hour that I was there!!)
What do readers think? (assuming you've read this far! Apologies for the length!) I emailed the apartment, who have said that online bank transfer is not possible... It's a lot less than the first place we tried, but maybe that's their game - so that more people pay the 50 thinking, "oh it must be alright if it's only 50 they're asking for."
If eufest and exitapartments are indeed scams and I'm not just paranoid then let it be hereforth known! And also, there is really little on exit accommodation where it is such a young festival. So if these are scams and people haven't got round to writing about them yet, or they are scams new in this year, then hopefully this can be a point of advice for future seekers of shaded-shelters-from-the-exit-sun.
Thanks for reading!
Hi fellow scam-ees/potential scam-ees,
I'm going to Exit festival in Serbia with some friends this summer (7th July-10th July) Really excited, it's my only holiday this year and I've just finished uni so it's a big celebration for us. Obviously want it to go as perfectly as possible for those reasons....
Serbia at this time is meant to be HOT. And the festival finishes in the early hours of the morning, so when you're ready to retire and recharge, you want it to be restful, not boiling... This means that camping is pretty intense (sorry.) Judging by the forums, people who go to Exit for a second time don't camp. They always find a hostel, and this is the general advice that spreads to newbies such as ourselves.
So, being a bit unorganised what with having to complete our degrees, we only recently started looking for hostels in Serbia, and lo and behold, hostelbookers.com and hostelworld.com had no available rooms in the three that they listed. We then started googling madly for anything - hostels/apartments, anything that has a roof that is made from nice, cooling cement or something, rather than sun-soaking nylon. We found one that sounded PERFECT! It was on http://www.eufest.com and this was the hostel http://www.eufest.com/exit/accommodation/detail/274. Brilliant! We're a group of 7, this was less than £10 a night and a 5 minute walk to the festival!? Perfect. So, excitedly, I asked for its availability, and to my huge pleasure they said there was one apartment left all we have to do is go through the booking page and secure the apartment! I quickly went off to do this to find that I needed to pay the full amount straight up. I've never had to pay a full amount for a hostel before. Usually, you pay a deposit and then if you cancel before 24hrs prior to arrival you lose the deposit but that's it, and if you cancel within 24 hours of arrival you lose everything, right? After a lot of emails, where eufest denied me contact to the hostel, and failed to give me an address that matched up to where they said the hostel was, I thought - this sounds suspicious.
We then looked to our alternative options which were slightly more expensive and settled for this one http://exitapartments.net/index.php?opt ... &Itemid=55 15 a night, 15 min walk from exit, really great option too. E-mailed and fantastic news - the apartment was available. Learnt that the price went up to 17 though, but thought, ok never mind it's still cheaper than most, and got the payment information from them. They sent me a document from their bank with loads of information half in serbian, half in english, asking for 50 euros to be paid to the account beneficiary and that I needed to pay through swift. I didn't understand this process but I was desperate so in my lunch break from work today, I ran to the bank to try and sort it out. The bank was really busy though and didn't know how to process this, so put me through two different queues and then the bank phone, and I ran out of time.
I've since been doing some research about serbian apartments and saw on lonelyplanet that people were warning others to not wire money across.. I had no idea paying through "swift" is a process of wiring money (so if this is a scam - thank you halifax for being too busy to deal with me in the whole hour that I was there!!)
What do readers think? (assuming you've read this far! Apologies for the length!) I emailed the apartment, who have said that online bank transfer is not possible... It's a lot less than the first place we tried, but maybe that's their game - so that more people pay the 50 thinking, "oh it must be alright if it's only 50 they're asking for."
If eufest and exitapartments are indeed scams and I'm not just paranoid then let it be hereforth known! And also, there is really little on exit accommodation where it is such a young festival. So if these are scams and people haven't got round to writing about them yet, or they are scams new in this year, then hopefully this can be a point of advice for future seekers of shaded-shelters-from-the-exit-sun.
Thanks for reading!
