I will post below the e-mails I am getting (reading from bottom to top)but to me they look perfectly normal with good grasp of english its just that its Poland.
Thank You for all the info - one last question - do I see a road passing along the house? How frquented is it?
Hi Chris,
Thanks for Your reply. Before I go on with the booking and prepayment, a couple more questions: is the villa indipendent or in a gated community? Is it safe for chilodren? Nearest supermarket? Pool heated?
I've stayed both in the Marbella area and in Sotogrande before - but never around Manilva. How are the beaches compared to the ones around Marbella?
Hope to hear from You soon
Hanna
Dear Mr Christopher Roberts,
I would like to enquire about the following properties:
Casa Sandra (SC19098)
27 April 2007 - 04 May 2007
Adults: 2 Children: 4
please let me know about availability, rates and location ( distance to nearest beach etc)
Best regards,
hanna smo[added by admin]ktun[to alter name]owicz
Chris
From Poland,does this look like a scam
-
Paul Carmel
- Posts: 3836
- Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2004 12:25 pm
- Location: Palma Mallorca & Greece
- Contact:
-
Paul Carmel
- Posts: 3836
- Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2004 12:25 pm
- Location: Palma Mallorca & Greece
- Contact:
-
Alan Knighting
- Posts: 4120
- Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 7:26 am
- Location: Monflanquin, Lot-et-Garonne, France
But, there are “spams� and there are “scams� but they are not the same thing.mario wrote:Reason is I have had an e-mail before from Poland which was definitely a scam.
I guess there’s little one can do about spams other than to ignore them. They appear to be part of life on the Internet these days. OK, one can report them but they exist in their hundreds of thousands and every one killed today is replaced by two more tomorrow.
Scams are another matter altogether. Most of them are trying to sell something you definitely don’t want, even if in the unlikely event it exist at all. Perhaps they could better be described as people trying to get their grubby hands on your hard-earned cash? Again, the best course of action is to ignore them but can you ignore them if they are enquiring about your rental property? The logical answer is “not really�. Many of them are so obvious that they should be ignored but what about the rest, those which just might be genuine?
My reaction is to reply, in the full knowledge that I will be wasting my time with many of them. The questions I constantly ask myself are “how can this person get his hand into my wallet?� and “how could this person benefit at my expense?�.
He’ll offer me a £1m Western Union bank draft to pay for a £500 rental so long as I send the balance to someone else? Am I as green as I am cabbage looking? I hope not!
He’ll pay for the holiday and then not turn up. I don’t think would ever happen but I would be into pocket if it did.
Do I believe that 50 gay pastors from Nigeria are visiting my area for an international conference that nobody’s ever heard of? Not really!
What is it I’m trying to say? It’s simple really. Never ever reply to a spam, ignore them all; never let a scammer get his hands on your money and; never let your desire to achieve a booking take over from common sense.
Fluffy
If you Google the name you will see it is that of a Polish TV journalist (which does not necessarily mean this is her, but would explain the excellent English). There is nothing I can see in the email that suggests a scam. I am obscuring the name so this thread does not get returned for a search on it.
Paolo
Lay My Hat
Lay My Hat
otherwise] 
-
charliechoice
- Posts: 73
- Joined: Wed Nov 15, 2006 9:33 pm
- Location: Ayia napa
Paolo, how do you google perspective renters, and what information am I likely to obtain ?paolo wrote:If you Google the name you will see it is that of a Polish TV journalist (which does not necessarily mean this is her, but would explain the excellent English). There is nothing I can see in the email that suggests a scam. I am obscuring the name so this thread does not get returned for a search on it.
Please excuse me if I appear a little lacking in this matter.
Regards Phil
Phil,
Copy and paste their name into a Google search. Then try it with double quotation marks before and after - this will specify you are searching for that exact sequence of words and be more accurate. If it is a common name add the town or country they are from, or the phone number. And try the phone number on itself.
Email address is increasingly unlikely to yield a result because people tend to be more careful about having them out there on the internet. But often the email address will be a business one so you can see which company they work for, and perhaps also find them on their company's website.
And Google is not the only search engine. You will find stuff through MSN or Yahoo that you won't find on Google and vice versa.
Some people have no footprint on the internet at all, but many will have enough about them to reassure you that they are bona fide.
Copy and paste their name into a Google search. Then try it with double quotation marks before and after - this will specify you are searching for that exact sequence of words and be more accurate. If it is a common name add the town or country they are from, or the phone number. And try the phone number on itself.
Email address is increasingly unlikely to yield a result because people tend to be more careful about having them out there on the internet. But often the email address will be a business one so you can see which company they work for, and perhaps also find them on their company's website.
And Google is not the only search engine. You will find stuff through MSN or Yahoo that you won't find on Google and vice versa.
Some people have no footprint on the internet at all, but many will have enough about them to reassure you that they are bona fide.
Paolo
Lay My Hat
Lay My Hat