Accommodation Scam In London

Welcome here Neel.

Yes, that website seems legit too.

Thank you David.......but i still need to find accomodation and I am really scared to book through internet.Just want to verify the infomations so that i dont lose money anymore. I am still stuck with finding the accomodation. Can you help me finding:)

Hi Neel, I am very sorry but we do not like to promote or recommend any business here unless it is anti scam related and we have personally verified the information.

In the case of accomodation sites, there are many out there that are fraudulent but there are certain things you can do to stay safe, of course, if you are ever unsure you can ask us but make sure you dont pay any money by Western Union, if anybody asks for you to pay that way, dont use them, be mindful of anybody who wants you to send money to yourself by western union, again, thats a scam.
Do not deal with anybody who says they are away from the property and you cant view it or of anybody who wants you to pay courier fees to have a key delivered to you. When given a price for a place to stay, phone a local estate agent and ask them if the price seems about right, if the price is too cheap then its another sign of a scam, if things look too good to be true they usually are.

You should also trust your gut instinct, especially when its telling you there is something wrong, check out every details before parting with your details let alone your cash

Thank you Ralph.....thats a great help indeed........I will keep these points in mind.

It's difficult to give advice without some basic knowledge of your general personal circumstances, such as how long you want to rent or lease a property, how large, where you are now and how large your family is.

If you're not English and aren't located in the UK then you must be more cautious. If you're a student coming to the UK and/or prepared to accept basic accomodation at the outset, then you could stay at a YMCA and look for more permanent accomodation when you get here. Universities often also offer reasonable accomodation during the summer holidays. Probably not the best choice if you're visitng the UK with your family on a two week holiday but it could be ideal for a backpacker on a budget holiday wanting accomodation located in central London.

If you're after something more permanent then if you visit this site

http://www.arla.co.uk/

and use their facility to seek out their members, then you're going to go a long way to avoiding outright scammers totally, and it appears they operate to a high standard, but they are probably for a more lengthy arrangement.

You're better off seeking out companies that are members of reputable organisations, but don't just accept websites with fancy logos copied by scammers. Another member here was seeking out cheap flights and using a search site which kept throwing up very dubious deals, but that's the risk of using cost as the sole criteria of your search. Scammers can always offer the cheapest deals.

Thanks for the information support team..I am luking for a week accomodation in London.I think going for a hostel is a better option now.We transfer money in Halfax bank account in the name of mayfair rentals.But when we went to our bank to question Halifax bank about opening such fraudulent account with all infomations wrong,they denied it. How can a financial institution open such frogery account? Should we question HALIFAX bank?I dont knw how to proceed?????? But seriously Halifax is answerable to this.

The best place to find accomodation advice for London is probably the Tripadvisor London Forum (just enter that into a google search and it's your first hit).
To be fair it's probably not the fault of Halifax... scammers often scam a third innocent party into processing their payments on their behalf, and so that Halifax account in all likelyhood belongs to some innocent person who thinks they are earning some extra cash legitimately.

Thanks for the reply. Can you help me with this apartment booking site if it is legitimate.Its http://www.welby.co.uk.

That site seems legitimate. Has been registerred for more then ten years already, and the address the registrant used is thesame as on the website.

Thanks a lot

Hey guys...I have been scammed as well. Fortunately, I did not send that much money, but still I am a student and have to work hard for it. Now I am sooooo darn mad that I have fallen for it and that I did not come across this website earlier. If only :S

The website is http://www.bayswater-flatslettings.co.uk and very similar to the ones that I have seen on the posts ahead. Of course, since yesterday, it has been unavailable. Like others as well. They have been doing this since 2008 and nobody has been able to stop them??? Are you kidding me??? So what if we see a similar website set up again soon? Is there anything we can do about it other then hope that others will see this and not pay them? They seriously need to be stopped!!!

Best regards,
gg

It is an insane situation gg456. We have quite a few dedicated fake site killers like 'Michael' who work without pay getting these fake sites taken down, but it takes a lot of work and effort and the sites can be replaced as quickly as they are removed.

The fact that they provide the scammers with a good income for no outlay is all the incentive they need. Perhaps an application could be designed that works within one of the browsers, alerting users to the latest fakes discovered when they land on one. That might actually be a useful idea, as fake site killers cannot shut down sites as quickly as they'd like and it would fill the gap between discovery and closure.

There are some pretty 'hot' technical specialists who work with us and they might be able to consider designing an 'add on' for Firefox attached to a database we maintain.

^ I feel honoured

Hi there gg456. If you see another website like this, report it here and I can assure you that I or another member of our site killing team will investigate and take action asap. Unfortunately, right now it is only fighting the symptoms we can do, and not the disease. As long as there isn't any interest from politicians/site hosters for this worldwide issue, I'm afraid there isn't much more we could do than we are doing now.. The addon Gomerpyle is mentioning could work, but this has pretty much the same problem as most other solutions we can provide; when someone hasn't been in contact with scammers, they won't see many reasons to go look for such an addon.

There are many accommodation scams out there. As a rental agency, New York Habitat has seen a lot of walk-in clients lately knocking on our office door at closing time in desperate need of housing at the last minute. All these people were victims of scams on the Internet and, after sending money, when they arrived at their accommodations they discovered the apartment didn't exist.

To try to prevent more people from becoming the victims of scams, I've written a couple of articles on our company Blog that I hope might be of help to people out there looking for trustworthy apartment rentals.

http://www.nyhabitat.com/blog/2009/04/2 ... tal-scams/

-Scamwarners.com is not responsible for the advertising content of external internet sites- Michelle

Rent Safely!

Linda

guys are you really serious?
i've found the advertisement at gumtree.com from www.bayswater-flatslettings.co.uk/ and i ask for availability from 13th to 20th august.
i confirmed after they ask me if i was willing to take the flat because they had another person who wanted the flat in that week.
so i paid and sent the copy of the payment and i've also ask for the taxi service to pick us at the airport.
can we do somenthing?
i'm totally homeless for next week..and also i've lost mine and my friend's money.