Jill Byron Flateland

[Moira]

I have no record of an inquiry or booking. I suspect it may be a scam.

We booked the apartment for Sept 8-14 and placed payment on VISA in full for the 607 pound on April 21, 2015 to reserve the room. We've been in Spain. I've received no word as to if you got payment. Please contact me at ----@--------.---. That's jill at flateland dot org in case HomeAway removes all email add as it has in the past. What is our reservation # and do you have directions to get to your apartment. If something is wrong, let me know so I can finalize plans.
Thanks, Jill Flateland

Thankfully I never clicked on 'respond in your dashboard'

[kevsboredagain]

Responding with the dashboard link is not the problem here. They want direct email contact so that they can proceed with the scam.

Hope you reported it.

[petemcveigh]

My first thought is that it may not be a scam (although always better to proceed with extreme caution), rather someone has mis-identified the property they have booked! The address does lead to someone with the right name and what looks like a fairly genuine blog posting (Google throws up a number of links including church groups).

My thought would be that this person has the wrong property and I would want to point it out to them to allow them to get their proper property sorted. Of course they might be the victim rather than the perpetrator of the scam in which case you need to know!

I would suggest using the dashboard to reply (and thus keep your personal address out of things) 1. to point them in a different direction if it is a legitimate mistake or 2. identify if they have been a victim of a scam which is using your property. If it turns out that this person is a scammer it should become apparent quite quickly in any subsequent mails.

[Moira]

Hi,

My first thoughts were
a) I'd made a mistake and potentially double booked. Thankfully not.
b) exactly, that they had been the subject of a scam using my property. I contacted them last night through Homeaway and informed them that the booking wasn't with me and gave them details of how to contact Homeaway to resolve.

Heard the following back today
"Thank you kindly. I will contact HomeAway. I see that you no longer have all of the dates available. It is a disappointment. I wish you the best and have a wonderful week."

Sounds as if they aren't very sure where they actually booked or if they actually have booked somewhere. What made me concerned about it being a scam was the reference to booking a 'room' when it is an apartment and the reference to finalizing plans. I think I'd be rather more concerned if I'd booked and paid for an apartment and something was wrong. But then again I think I'd have been chasing up before now if I'd paid for somewhere in April and not received any correspondence.

[kevsboredagain]

I guessed that one completely wrong. All the more reason to always confirm a suspected scam by a careful response before trying to guess.

[Moira]

I think with so much going on with scams we are all a bit concerned about the impact they are having on the holiday letting industry and our businesses. Ultimately I suppose it's best to err on the side of caution.