WARNING: holiday.com

[janskov]

I have found my apartments registered on a rental site that I have never had anything to do with: holiday.com.

The apartments are announced at a rental price that is lower than the price I charge everywhere else, so I fear that they intend to make fake rentals.

My worst nightmare is that I one day will find a family outside the house, expecting to have a great holiday and finding that they have been cheated. This may ruin the whole market for rentals via the Internet.

Searching the net I have found no information to suggest that holiday.com is involved in fraud, but on the other hand there are stories out there about irregularities connected with their payment system and dubious methods in the way they have obtained the domain name.

May I suggest that you all check holiday.com to see if your property is announced and for those of us with a website I suggest that we post a clear warning against renting through this site.

These warnings will be picked up by Google and hopefully spread through BLOGS and FORA like this.

Any other suggestions?

[Alan Knighting]

Janskov,

I have checked it out and I am most definitely not included.

My reaction is quite the opposite to what you might have expected (hoped?) it might be.

I quite liked the site. When searching for a property it is possible to be either general or specific about where you want to be and the results come up really quickly.

I wonder, does any forum member advertise on the site and, if so, what is their opinion of it?

Regards

Alan

[janskov]

And that is what scares me because my apartments have definitely not been entered by me.

I have checked the other apartments listed for Croatia and it looks like they have been copied from holiday-rentals.com

[Normandy Cow]

Being stickler for grammar and punctuation, and a big fan of the book "Eats, Shoots and Leaves", I would never advertise on a website that uses a link called "Rental's Home" to get back to the home page!

[paolo]

It does look like they have borrowed listings from holiday-rentals, although not mine.

Some sites do hi-jack ads from other sites so that they look successful and busy to users and potential advertisers.

This particular site is registered to an address in Tokyo, which is unusual. I’ll tell holiday-rentals to take a look.

[Linda Freese]

Janskov,

I agree with you that it seems unethical to take your advert without your permission, however on the up side, if the contact details are yours, then surely it´s a good thing for you as it means free advertising? By the way, I couldn´t find my advert !

Linda

[ross]

Paolo, thank you for your email today and your concern about Holiday.com.

I can confirm this site is nothing to do with Holiday-Rentals.com and that Holiday.com have infringed the copyright of some of our advertisers in exactly the way you have described by republishing their property listings.

We are making various legal approaches to Holiday.com in order to try to force them to remove such advertising from their site. So far we have met with great difficulty as they are operating out of Japan and the Far East.

Please see their page holiday.com/info/copyright for their suggested way you can complain. The fact that they claim "Holiday.com respects the intellectual property of others" is rather laughable in the circumstances.

We are trying to do our best to have these practices stopped, but I suggest you also try to contact them and ask to have your advert removed from their site if you do wish to get involved.

Apologies for the inconvenience this has caused and rest assured we are doing all we can to prevent repeat occurrences.

[tansy]

yes both ours are on...my husband can't see the harm..I'm slightly put out only because I would like to change a few things...but is it a case of getting a booking and being content then?

[Alan Knighting]

The more I think about this sort of piracy the more I am worried by it.

While the pirate site is behaving on a "direct contact with and payment to the owner" basis I suppose it will not directly jeopardise the interests of the owner or of the holiday maker.

BUT, what if the pirate site is behaving as an "agency"? It takes the booking and it takes the money. What it does not do is tell the owner or pay the owner. The owner takes a booking of his own and then two groups arrive on the day; the genuine group and the defrauded group, who think they are genuine. What then?

Alan

[Linda Freese]

The owner takes a booking of his own and then two groups arrive on the day; the genuine group and the defrauded group, who think they are genuine. What then?

This probably wouldn´t happen though as presumably the fraudulent booker does not have the address of the property?

[paolo]

The site uses a contact form that conceals the owner's email address. So where does this booking enquiry go to?

Unless they have secured your email address by other means, either the enquiry will not go anywhere - i.e. they don't care because what they want is for potential advertisers to see a 'successful' site with lots of other ads. Then only paying advertisers will get their enquiries.

Or...if they are really bad people, they could go ahead and take the booking and the money, with the promise of directions to come after final payment is received. Then the renter is left with the task of trying to recover his money from somewhere in Asia, and it is hard enough trying to do that from somewhere in your own country.

So yes, these pirate sites are not good news for our industry.

[tansy]

I did a trail booking as John Tokyo....it all came through in less than 4 minutes!...AND was checked for viruses.

I think they are hoping that bookings will come then next year ask us for money...I have to say they have some big names on there and the name isn't bad...Holiday.com

I think it would have courteous to ask us to do a free trial ....but maybe decision was taken lift x amount of properties and see what happens?

This is a tricky one...but at the moment I am not too angry!

I'm going to email to see if I can change some stuff on the site & will report back!

[Alan Knighting]

Linda,

This probably wouldn´t happen though

That's what they all say before the fraud is perpetrated upon them. It's the renter who is really at risk here!

Regards

Alan

[Linda Freese]

Hi Alan

I was refering to two sets of guests arriving at the property - given that one set would not have the address anyway - but I totally agree with you regarding the fraudulent aspect.

I have just checked the site again and one of my properties is listed! I have sent myself a request and will wait to see if it reaches me or not. I´ll keep you all informed!

Linda

[Linda Freese]

Unless they have secured your email address by other means, either the enquiry will not go anywhere - i.e. they don't care because what they want is for potential advertisers to see a 'successful' site with lots of other ads. Then only paying advertisers will get their enquiries

Paolo, I think this may be the case.

I received a very quick response to my test email, asking me to confirm that I still wished to submit the enquiry, which I did but now I am still waiting for the "enquiry" to reach my "in box"!!!

I have sent them an email of complaint and have asked them to remove my properties but I doubt anything will come of it.