Hijacked by VacationsFRBO.com

[shelley]

Hi there...

Quick question about how to handle this situation. I received a rental inquiry today from VacationsFRBO.com, which is a site that allows owners to post their rentals for free. I have never posted my property there.

Some of the pictures are from my flickr website. The text write up, is from a word document that I send people who are interested in renting our villa. The language is not posted on VRBO, where I do business.

Needless to say, some of the information in this VacationsFRBO.com listing is now out of date and or incorrect. And I can't change it because I did not set up the listing, so I am not the "owner" of the data.

I'm irritated. Truly irritiated.

Has this happened to anyone, with this firm? Can I do anything about it? Other than send the nasty email I already sent?

Any advice would be quite welcome.

Cheers,
Shelley

[AndyH]

Not heard of this company before. Have you tried contacting them directly and asking them why they were listing your property? I see they have a contact us form but no phone number (or at least not that I could see on the page).

I assume as they are quoting a referral scheme of $10 that they are an American site.

Hope you manage to sort it out.

Andy.

[debk]

Shelley, I'm confused. Are saying that the website got your info either from a former guest or by posing as an inquirer in order to get your writeups???

This type of stunt does nothing to improve the reputation of Vacation Rentals. Imagine how frustrating for the potential guests... sending off inquiries into neverland, based on out-of-date info, not even realizing the postings are not authorized. GRRRRR!

I hope you get your listing removed asap. Go get 'em.
debk

[memes]

Was the enquiry possibly this one?
Hi -

We are retired (attorney and teacher) looking for a vacation rental for two weeks starting March 31.
Our daughter and grandchildren live nearby, so your place would be quite convenient for a visit.
They may spend part of the time with us and we may also be traveling with another couple.
Is your place still available for that period?
We are non-smokers and will not be traveling with any pets.

Thank you kindly!
- Richard and Kathy

because if it was I got it too and its a scam. Fooled me for the 1st time in ages. According to the vacation rentals at yahoo group forum a load of people received them..

Sigh

M

[debk]

Oh, bother. Looks like VacationsFRBO is a Rentalo wannabe.
debk

[Big Sis..]

Oh, bother. Looks like VacationsFRBO is a Rentalo wannabe.
debk

Thats exactly what I started to think deb.....not much to aspire to Eh.....

We better all start unoptingin........

[Nessie]

Was the enquiry possibly this one?
Hi -

We are retired (attorney and teacher) looking for a vacation rental for two weeks starting March 31.
Our daughter and grandchildren live nearby, so your place would be quite convenient for a visit.
They may spend part of the time with us and we may also be traveling with another couple.
Is your place still available for that period?
We are non-smokers and will not be traveling with any pets.

Thank you kindly!
- Richard and Kathy

because if it was I got it too and its a scam. Fooled me for the 1st time in ages. According to the vacation rentals at yahoo group forum a load of people received them..

Sigh

M

Yes i got this too, i actually replied , but got no feed back

[brenda]

I got it too - can usually smell out the scam enquiries but did fall for this one + sent info. Silly me!

[Big Sis..]

This is so wrong...

And no Brenda your not silly its the companies...not being silly being.......WELL......devious...

I hope other people reading this forum are warned and if they advertise with this company realise what sort of company it is...and if anyone from the company is watching maybe we could have an explanantion.....

Does indeed smell a bit like Rentalogate starting up again...
T
his is one of the very good reasons that this forum is SOOO great what chance would we have had to know this was happening otherwise..

Thanks again Paolo and all the other people behind the scenes,
Not only have you got a Forum that advises,
Helps...and educates...It also attracts the sort of person who will give there help and knowledge [and friendship]
without wanting or expecting anything back and so it perpetuates itself...we go from cleaning windows to The legal people advising on serious matters[not that cleaning windows isnt serious ]...absolutely priceless......

[memes]

Yeah Richard and Kathy seem to have been keen to holiday all over the world it seems. I think a lot of us fell for it and sent back nice chatty replies.
Can't see the point of it really. Someone suggested the clue was in the 'too much info' re their jobs and the yahoo address. I use a yahoo address myself so I know that not everyone with yahoo is dodgy!
I wonder if anyone will get a reply suggesting they pay 4 x the price and we refund the money, surely no one falls for that these days. Otherwise what was the point - I wonder if its the rental co just seeing how much response they got as a test?
Hmm I will mail them to see what they have to say about it..

M

[debk]

I wonder if its the rental co just seeing how much response they got as a test?

Let's hope not!!!
debk

[memes]

I have mailed them suggesting it may have gone to most of their rental owners and is obv a scam and asking if they intend to warn any of their owners not to waste their time as other listing sites do and what their take on the whole thing is.
Will let you know if I hear anything back..

M

[squirrel]

I got this one from Richard and Kathy too but there was only two of them and they wanted some more photos. Fell for it completely as I had recently had an enquiry from some local people whe had relations coming over from the States and I thought this may be a follow up. I even suggested daughter may like to come for a look. Feel like a real prat.

[memes]

Well to give em credit vacations FRBO did come back to me.

This was their reply -

'Yes, unfortunately we were the victim of a spam "attack" that basically "fooled" our blocking software. We detected the logic weakness and have corrected the situation, but unfortunately quite a few messages went out. We get visited nearly everyday by someone who attempts to use our database to contact owners. Most of these folks get blocked at a very early level, but this particular individual was more clever than most and our software was unfortunately insufficiently robust to stop messages from being sent. Earlier we were notifying listing owners, at times, when scams were sent that requested a financial transaction, but we had largely stopped that practice figuring that folks are sufficiently well-aware of how to deal with these "phishing" schemes. The other challenge we have is that some of the message that are sent make us wonder whether or not they are legitimate, just because they may be so poorly written or terse, but we figure we have to give people the benefit of the doubt as that may be their writing style or English may be a second language for them. In other words, we really don't want to be in the mode of sending messages out to owners saying "you received a message from so-and-so, be careful!". We are thinking that rather than trying to notify owners about suspect emails, we are considering a posting board on the website where owners can post their experience and warn others. That way, the community is self policing, rather than us trying to play that role. What are your thoughts?'

So I definately do not think it was them winding us all up.

My reply was -
'Hi thanks for coming back - seems like a reasonable idea to me though I am on over 10 different sites and don't check them all all the time- the problem is of course you don't know others are getting them too. I just picked it up because I get the vacationrentals yahoo groups forum digest and it was posted there - lots of owners on the laymyhat.com website have had it too. People have suggested it was sent by you to test how your owners respond! I'm glad to learn its obv not the case.
Is there anywhere in your system you can tell if one email address has requested info from more than say 20 owners? that would ring alarm bells and then you could warn us. Do you know how many enquiries 'Rick and kathy' sent - I suspect it was hundreds. As no follow up has arrived I do not understand what the point of the scam is - as you say we're all pretty aware of the overpayng and asking for the difference trick. And it was far more convincing than the normal badly spelled ones from Rev X in Nigeria so I'm not surprised you didn't pick it up. Shame it was my only ever enquiry from you!..'

So as I have mentioned this forum he may come back and also address the 'turning up on a site without registering' issue raised originally..

M

[shelley]

Hi all,

Thanks for all the responses and thinking on this forum! I was a victim of that spam email address, that is definitely what brought my attention to the VacationsFRBO listing of my villa.

I wrote VacationsFRBO and they were quite willing to remove my listing at my request. And they were fairly offended that I thought they had done something improper, because they believe their listing process through use of email addresses, etc. provides strong enough controls to ensure that properties are not listed by a person other than the owner.

I still don't know how my property was listed on their website. I had someone cover rentals for me on a couple of occasions while I was out, and they tell me that they absolutely did not create any listings on my behalf. (That in fact, there were no inquiries, so they didn't do anything)

So. It's a mystery. And the burden of dealing with all the spam and fraud related to renting a villa is wearing on me. However, VacationsFRBO has been quite responsive to my concerns, and seem as honestly befuddled as I am about how my listing made their website.

Thanks again!