WARNING: holiday.com

[Alan Knighting]

Would it be a practical or effective idea for Holiday Rentals to include a banner on each page of their website displaying a disclaimer and warning notice with regards to the practices of Holiday.com?

It would not be the answer but it might be a small nail in the coffin of Holiday.com.

Any thoughts?

[alexia s.]

Since nobody who has not been committed to a psychiatric hospital would pay $30 for a mere enquiry for a holiday let, the people behind holiday.com aren't doing it for the money - unless they are outpatients of a psychiatric hospital themselves.
Wouldn't articles in the press denouncing this fraud serve our interest best?

[Patia]

Well, I am very pleased by the lengthy and informative response from H-R and from this, and from what debk has discovered, I can see why they have been so guarded up until now. I apologise for thinking they were dragging their heels.

I was also pleased to see that they confirmed my instincts in ensuring I didn't let these people have my e-mail address were the right ones. Well . . . I was . . . until it suddenly dawned on me that, in fact, there is a very easy way for them to get this information. It perhaps wouldn't be right to post this here, just in case they haven't thought of it . . . but that is an absolutely futile hope I'm sure, it really is just too obvious, and I can't believe I've only just worked it out.

Patia

[alexia s.]

"there is a very easy way for them to get this information."
If we're thinking of the same thing, wouldn't it take them an incredibly long time to do this?

[Patia]

Sorry Alexia . . . I really haven't worked out the 'quote' thing yet - another problem for another day! However:

Well, it would depend on how they decided to operate it wouldn't it . . . and whether they only targeted those properties where interest was shown by them receiving enquiries . . . or something . . .

Anyway, I guess their computers would do most of the work wouldn't they ??

Patia

[debk]

Copy of an email I just sent to Ross.

As much as I like Alan's idea, H-R must be careful of libel... as well as mucking up their ongoing legal processes.

Dear Ross -

Thank you for your updated posting at laymyhat.

I am sorry to hear that you have a trans-Atlantic team of lawyers who have worked for two months without finding valid contact info for holiday.com; that must be very expensive and frustrating.

I'm forwarding a summary of details that I found last evening, in the hopes that it might be of assistance:

1. The address for Holiday.com at 2225 109th Avenue NE, Bellevue, 98004 (business license #602134837) is most definitely a valid address. That is, it exists. Next door at 2230 109th Ave NE is "Quality Quilting."

2. The address listed on the business license for Nordic Holdings (business license #601565138) appears to be valid as I've been in the Two Union Square office building many times: 3100 Two Union Square, 601 Union Street, Seattle, 98101.

3. There is only one K/Ken/Kenneth Hobbs (contact listed for Nordic Holding via their business license) in Seattle. His home address is definitely valid, being about four blocks from one of our homes in the same neighborhood: 4617 Lawton Lane W, Seattle, 98199. His personal phone number is 206-284-0692; "284" is the correct prefix for this neighborhood.

4. The phone number listed for Gunnar Westerdal, owner of holiday.com (425-455-3963) is valid. I just called it and a woman sleepily answered. Perhaps it was his wife, Melody. She also has a phone listed at that same address: 425-688-1456. I assume that Melody's is also a valid number but decided to not call back on that line since it is 3am in Seattle. The area code, 425, and prefix, 455, are both appropriate for this area of Bellevue.

Of course, should the above lead nowhere, a good resume posted to one of holiday.com's key job openings would rapidly yield all necessary contact information.

Holiday.com (legally known as "Holiday, Inc" though perhaps not officially "incorporated" in the State of WA) is a WA State business. Its website indicates that it is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nordic Holdings, also a registered WA State corporation. The fact that the holiday.com domain is registered in Japan seems irrelevant -- the dns name servers for holiday.com and nordicholdings.com are even the same, with the first registered in Japan and the other in Bellevue-- but no doubt your legal team is dealing with this appropriately.

Ross, thank you again for your onging efforts.

Best regards,
Deb Kleber
VisitingPortugal.com
cc: laymyhat.com

[paolo]

"there is a very easy way for them to get this information."
If we're thinking of the same thing, wouldn't it take them an incredibly long time to do this?

I don't think it is letting any cats out of the bag to say there is an easy way to harvest emails of owners - that is to send a fake enquiry through a listing site like holiday-rentals. They would not be the first to have done it to me. Holiday-rentals have 11,000 ads, so it would take as long as it takes to send out 11,000 enquiries, and process the responses. However, a site like h-r will most likely have security measures against this sort of abuse.

I have separate email addresses for my listing site enquiries, so if I get spam from a listing site to one of these I know they must have sent a fake enquiry to get it.

[paolo]

I really haven't worked out the 'quote' thing yet - another problem for another day!

Patia,

You can either hit the 'quote' button in the post you want to quote, which will give you the whole message with the poster's name above the quote;

or: you can copy a passage by highlighting and copying as in Word, then pasting this into a reply, highlighting again, and hitting the 'quote' button.

[Linda Freese]

They responded to me today to confirm that they were removing all my adverts from the site. I will check later and let you know if they have!

Here is their response:

Linda,

As you have reqested the websites
http://rentals.holiday.com/fuengirola
http://rentals.holiday.com/nueva-torrequebrada
http://rentals.holiday.com/el-faro-
http://rentals.holiday.com/fuengirola-
no longer exist.

If you change your mind you can still get to your data. Use the Advertiser Sign In link http://rentals.holiday.com/index.php/login. You have not been assigned a password so click on the button "Password reminder". When asked for an email address use xxxx@aol.com.

Sincerely,

Peter

Custom services manager Holiday.com

Can you believe the cheek they have asking me to contact them if I change my mind???!

[debk]

If you change your mind you can still get to your data.

Hmm, I think it's cheeky to admit that they still have your data.

[Patia]

I really haven't worked out the 'quote' thing yet - another problem for another day!

Patia,

You can either hit the 'quote' button in the post you want to quote, which will give you the whole message with the poster's name above the quote;

or: you can copy a passage by highlighting and copying as in Word, then pasting this into a reply, highlighting again, and hitting the 'quote' button.

Thank you Paolo - trying the first suggestion with this. I'll get there in the end!

Yes, it's such an obvious way for them to get the info isn't it. I too use a different e-mail address for this, but I'm afraid I often answer with my main address . . . which doesn't help. It was just that I suddenly remembered I'd received a (fairly obviously) bogus enquiry the day after we sent ours to holiday.com and that's what made me finally 'fall in'. On reflection this was probably a coincidence but came from a chap purporting to have a travel agency in London, with an English-sounding name . . . but without the normal command of the language. Unusually for me, I decided to reply, politely, in the negative . . . then wished I hadn't.

Sorry - probably a total red herring and, when I checked, it wasn't through H-R but another major listings site.

Patia

[Ciapolin]

Just a thought - are things like this covered by the Data Protection Act (or similar legislation in the US)? In the UK and EU now, you have to get the person's express permission to use their data (even if they are a business), especially if it is being published!

[Alan Knighting]

As much as I like Alan's idea, H-R must be careful of libel...

Quite right but the basic defence to a libel charge is truth. Also, most cases of libel are civil not criminal - an entirely different standard of proof and evidence and not a single politician or bureaucrat in sight.

As Oscar Wilde found, there is a big difference between being right legally and being right in reality.

One way or another I want to see , NO! - I demand, a resolution of this problem.

[John Borg]

Well, maybe I risked giving away an email address, but what the hell, I simply demanded that I be removed at once.
This is the reply I got:


John Borg,

As you have requested the website http://rentals.holiday.com/mellieha-island-of-malta/ no longer exist.
If you change your mind you can still get to your data. Use the Advertiser Sign In link http://rentals.holiday.com/index.php/login. You have not been assigned a password so click on the link labeled "I forgot my password". When asked for an email address use *****************.com.
Your site had been visited 20 times since Apr 12 2005. Goggle has crawled it 2 times and MSN 12 times

Sincerely,
Peter
Custom services manager Holiday.com

I checked it out and yes, it's gone.

By the way, no it did not effect my Holiday-Rentals enquiries. I have had a constant response this week for July and August 2006 which is just like it was last year this time round.

[Garri]

First off, Debk I like your style! Good email to HR, bet they wish they'd come here before hiring a crack team of U.S. lawyers for 2 months

From reading this thread it appears that Holiday.com may have developed spider scripts to pull the data into their own database from the H-R site, easily done if one is so technically inclined. The data could then be parsed through XML and reformatted.

But I don't see the advantage of that strategy as it clearly pi$$es people off and to offer a choice of $30 per enquiry is totally mad but I guess that's their way of trying to sucker people into an annual fee deal.

Good domain name though!