Lay My Hat

I was contacted yesterday by a lady saying she was just about to book my villa on this website www.canariesholidayvillas.com
as it was half the price that it is on owners direct!
This scam website have stolen my photos, rewritten the description, added some fake reviews and are adveromy villa at half price.
There is no phone number and they only accept payment by bank transfer.
Any advice what to do?
The scam website is hosted with godaddy

Report the domain to the provider in the first instance.

Have you checked that it is a scam site, or is it that some third party has registered your details on there ?

Godaddy say they won't accept reports without court order!!

Action Fraud?
http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/

www.canariesholidayvillas.com is mentioned as a scam website on the following links:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/money/brit-holi ... s-10417254

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news ... exist.html


There is no phone number, only accept bank transfer and I did not give permission!
They are advertising my villa at half price!

I've reported domains before that were taken down by their hosts when the scam became obvious, but there was a procedure to follow. Varies for each.

http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/fraudu ... oved-nov11

Following on from some of the posts above, I spent a while looking at a holiday rental website called greekvillaescapes(dot)com. Having looked at sample properties on the Greek islands of Mykonos and Kefalonia, I saw they were all managed by an individual with a very Greek-sounding name and with his (purported) photo alongside. When I made a Google Image search of the photo, I discovered it was the identical photo of the president of an insurance company based in Atlanta, USA. I have emailed him and told him about his new additional role and change of name.

Now, again using an image search, I am trying to locate the owners of the actual holiday villas, to warn them of this apparent fraud.

This is a BIG BIG problem, it seems as soon as one website is taken down, they open another found my villa on another of their scam websites www.canarianluxuryvillas.com

Really terrible for you, you must be worried sick that someone is going to turn up there having paid for your villa in good faith. Have you contacted the police? And maybe post on the Trip Advisor forum for your area advising possible visitors of the scam.

I sympathise.....there is now a facebook page that alerts people to the scam websites advertising villas in Ibiza. There are at least 3 running at the moment and no one has been able to get them closed down. One thing we have done though is bombard them with 'enquiries'.....so much so that 2 of them are no longer answering booking requests.

It must be nerve wracking for owners though. Oddly enough our place never seems to figure on any......at first I thigh it was because ours wasn't glamorous enough but now I wondrous if it is because we have our own website.

As an aside.....we who have our own sites (which struggle to get found via Google) are constantly amazed that these, usually new, websites get found. How? We always ask those who say they've been scammed....but so far haven't received and answer.

Sorry I couldn't be of any help. It seems almost impossible to get them removed.

Mousie
x

https://www.digitaldreamsholidays.com and another SCAM website advertising my villa without permission and at half the price I charge!

mousey wrote:https://www.digitaldreamsholidays.com and another SCAM website advertising my villa without permission and at half the price I charge!

Mousey, I don't think that asking your permission even entered their heads. 'Digital Dreams Holidays' even make an appearance on TrustPilot with 5-star reviews throughout, of course!

There is one thing which singles out these scam artists from the genuine OTA's and that is they never show a contact telephone number for themselves. Also, availability calendars show every date as available.

AndrewH wrote:
There is one thing which singles out these scam artists from the genuine OTA's and that is they never show a contact telephone number for themselves.

I'm not sure this if always true, Andrew - I've heard of cases of holidaymakers phoning up genuine sounding 'owners' and therefore assuming everything was legit

The availability calendar coupled with the 'too good to be true' deals is a giveaway, but still people fall for them so I don't know what the answer is. Interested in Mouse's thoughts on having a website for your property to deter cloners. Do you, or anyone else have any evidence of this working? Like Mouse, our place isn't high end, but it's large (so therefore worth a scammer's time financially) and photos could easily be digitally enhanced to make it look smarter, yet, while friends' properties have been cloned, ours hasn't as yet.

Ecosse wrote:

AndrewH wrote:
There is one thing which singles out these scam artists from the genuine OTA's and that is they never show a contact telephone number for themselves.

I'm not sure this if always true, Andrew - I've heard of cases of holidaymakers phoning up genuine sounding 'owners' and therefore assuming everything was legit

Yes, that's true of course where actual owners (or fake owners) get involved, like with HA, TA etc., but I should have made it clear that I am making a distinction between that kind of site and the full-on online agencies, which handle everything regarding the lettings without involving any owner participation.

I have in mind 'Villa Plus', 'CV Villas', 'Solmar Villa Holidays' and other well known names. It is that kind of site which these scammers are mimicking. The scammers steal exact property details and photos from them and reproduce them on their own impressive looking fake sites. These are the fake sites without phone numbers, which I mean.

I did some digging around and found one of Solmar's villas on a scam site. I told Solmar and they said "but we have exclusive marketing rights for that property". Maybe once, but not any more. They were unaware.