US website
US website
I've just had an e-mail from the US rental website www. therightvacationrental.com offering free advertising - as it is free, it isn't too much of a dilemme deciding whether or not to sign up, but I wondered if anyone had ever heard of them?
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- Giddy Goat
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Neither had I! This is the email I got (I suppose it is spam, but I was the only addressee) and it seemed a little different from the usual sort. I'll let you know!
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am an American who represents a travel company based in Philadelphia, PA. I am looking for landlords in Brittany who would be interested in advertising their accommodations gratuit on our website ( www. therightvacationrental.com). Our clients would use the website to book directly with you through email. My company is one of the oldest rental agencies in the US and has sent over 50,000 clients to Europe since 1975--perhaps this would be of some interest to you?
This is not a gimmick as I, myself, will be traveling to Brittany in September to see accommodations on Sep. 14 & 15.
Thanks!
Pete Novick
France Assistant
The RIGHT Vacation Rental
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am an American who represents a travel company based in Philadelphia, PA. I am looking for landlords in Brittany who would be interested in advertising their accommodations gratuit on our website ( www. therightvacationrental.com). Our clients would use the website to book directly with you through email. My company is one of the oldest rental agencies in the US and has sent over 50,000 clients to Europe since 1975--perhaps this would be of some interest to you?
This is not a gimmick as I, myself, will be traveling to Brittany in September to see accommodations on Sep. 14 & 15.
Thanks!
Pete Novick
France Assistant
The RIGHT Vacation Rental
- Giddy Goat
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Susan, you could ask him whether his travel company is licensed to do business in the State of PA. I'd like to see those details and also ask him why they aren't publishing any registered details for the various foundations they claim to have on their websites. Ask him where are these corporate entities are based. My guess is Haiti, where they also own a bank. How convenient.
Foundations are very strictly regulated in the USA as 501 (c) 3 corporations, and I don't see any details on their websites claiming that their "family of foundations" are the same thing at all, only mention of a parent company called Idyll Ltd, which is a privately owned company, operating something called Untours.com . I don't think any of it is regulated by the US, and I also don't think it's coincidence that they are only soliciting properties outside the US where regulation and scrutiny of what claims to be a US entity is even less likely.
I could be wrong, but they would have to do a lot more than produce a few pages of a website to convince me to allow them to charge people for using my property.
Foundations are very strictly regulated in the USA as 501 (c) 3 corporations, and I don't see any details on their websites claiming that their "family of foundations" are the same thing at all, only mention of a parent company called Idyll Ltd, which is a privately owned company, operating something called Untours.com . I don't think any of it is regulated by the US, and I also don't think it's coincidence that they are only soliciting properties outside the US where regulation and scrutiny of what claims to be a US entity is even less likely.
I could be wrong, but they would have to do a lot more than produce a few pages of a website to convince me to allow them to charge people for using my property.
- Giddy Goat
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OK, now I'm getting somewhere. The above paragraph taken from their terms and conditions tells me that they are going to charge a fee for renting your property. (This in addition to asking you for donations to their various foundations by the way)(The RIGHT Vacation Rental) is only an agent for the property owner or his/her representative and has no authority to make settlements. Telephone and fax numbers of the property owner or his/her representative are located in the contact information email, provided after the final payment has been received.
Since I do now believe that they are based in Media, PA, they're operating under US Federal Law, which does not permit anyone to act as an agent for another property owner without a Real Estate License, so you can add that to your list of questions. Who is the Licensed Real Estate Broker in this transaction?
As you can see in the fine print above, they are confirming that they are acting as an agent for the property owner, so there's no grey area about the type of relationship they are trying to create with you.
However, that doesn't mean that you will be receiving a bill from them neccessarily. Who pays them has no bearing on who they represent. They can represent you and still be paid by the renter, it doesn't matter as long as everyone knows about it and agrees to it. In fact, they can even doubledip and be paid by both sides. Bet you didn't know that part...
This particular company claims 30 years experience (under another name) bringing US customers to Europe for private vacation rentals, as I'm sure you gathered by now. Maybe it's the best thing that ever happened to you, go for it. I would just be absolutely clear in your mind that they're asking you to hire them as an Agent and that's basically what this is all about. If you agree to hire them, then you're going to be entering into a legally binding agreement which has a start date and a finish date and gives them considerable power over you when it comes to doing business with anybody else in this country (the US). That's the part I don't like, combined with their lack of disclosure, which I find troubling for a company that purports to have been around for so long.
Again, I could be completely wrong, but please don't click any yes I agrees on their website without reading every tiny word of what they are asking you to sign. This isn't the typical freebie listing site, it's something else altogether.
- Giddy Goat
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Joanna, perhaps it needs someone to email them to express interest and request clarification of who pays what to whom in this business arrangement - I haven't looked at their terms and conditions myself, but the extract you've offered above is about as clear as mud!
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be
Susan, now that you've posted the ad and Joanna has done some digging, this rings a (faint) bell.
We may have been contacted by these people, but a few years ago. I remember something about Philadelphia, and the company we spoke to did want to charge a fee on top of our rental fee. If I recall correctly, it would have been added to our rental prices.
I had extensive discussions with that person about how I could justify charging more on his website than on any other website, and what would happen if someone contacted me through his site and then discovered that my own prices were lower. We also talked about the idea that I could charge the renter the same price as that on my other sites, but the fee would come out of that, so I would just get less money per rental from that site. I didn't like that, because it quickly added up to much more than a typical listing site fee.
We went back and forth for a while, and I was never satisfied. In the end, I decided that I would never advertise on a site which charges fees to the renter.
However, it could have been a different company...
We may have been contacted by these people, but a few years ago. I remember something about Philadelphia, and the company we spoke to did want to charge a fee on top of our rental fee. If I recall correctly, it would have been added to our rental prices.
I had extensive discussions with that person about how I could justify charging more on his website than on any other website, and what would happen if someone contacted me through his site and then discovered that my own prices were lower. We also talked about the idea that I could charge the renter the same price as that on my other sites, but the fee would come out of that, so I would just get less money per rental from that site. I didn't like that, because it quickly added up to much more than a typical listing site fee.
We went back and forth for a while, and I was never satisfied. In the end, I decided that I would never advertise on a site which charges fees to the renter.
However, it could have been a different company...
Brooke
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Untours and their new company, The Right Vacation Rental, are advertisers with Slow Travel. We're very proud to have them because they are a great company. Here's a post from our message board where Pauline talks about Untours and introduces a video about the company and its founder Hal Taussig: http://slowtalk.com/groupee/forums/a/tp ... 8081049721
Chris from slowtrav.com