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RatedApartments.Com Releases A Checklist Of Safety Points For Renters

RatedApartments.com has come up with a list of security points for renters to follow when booking a vacation rental or serviced apartment online. The checklist comes at a time when the industry is been rocked by a series of scams with fraudulent property listings, fraudsters hacking e-mail accounts of legal, authentic property owners, and much more.

Recently, DailyMail.co.uk carried a news article on its online edition about a British family losing £4,150 and its family vacation after falling victim to an online scam. The family had booked a villa in southern France for their summer vacations on HomeAway's Holiday-Rentals.co.uk, a well-known vacation rental site that offers its own Rent with Confidence Guarantee as a safeguard against such scams.

Mr. Martin came to know that he had fallen victim to a scam only after he failed to receive the contract from the owner even after a full payment had been made upfront. Apparently, the owner's mail had been hacked by the fraudster and Holiday-Rentals.co.uk's efforts to alert him about the fraud were stopped by his e-mail provider.

The Martin family is not the only family to have fallen victim to such a scam. Such scams are very common and many renters tend to lose their money as well as their holidays – some realize it only when they arrive at the destination and find that no such property exists. This happens despite vacation rental listing sites such as HomeAway.com and RatedApartments.com doing their best to keep fake listings at bay with stringent security checks for all properties that are listed and consistent screenings.

RatedApartments.com keeps a consistent check on all the properties that are listed on the site and asks its guests to rate the properties in which they stay. Any property that fails to live up to its expectations or receives two continuous negative reviews is immediately removed from the site. Renters also have the option of sending their enquiries directly to RatedApartments.com through the Enquiries or Questions links.

A team of professionals personally attend all enquiries received through these two modes and match the renter to the perfect rental home based on his/her requirements. This provides an added security layer for the renters as they are assured of bookings for rentals that actually exist.

Renters who prefer to book online are requested to do a few security checks in advance to secure peace of mind regarding the authenticity of the vacation rental property and the bookings:

1.Firstly, if you are looking for a rental online, ensure that the property exists by typing its address on Google Maps. If you cannot find it online, then it is a good possibility that the property just does not exist.

2.Keep a record of all your mails and talk to the owner personally a couple of times. If he does not answer your phones, then take it as a red flag and step back. Check the rental rate; if it is not low season and the rates appear to be too good to be true then it probably is.

3.Check the mails you receive from the owner; if they appear to have more information than required, have excessive spelling mistakes, typos or capital letters, then forget about the property. It is a sure case of spam.

4.Do not, under any circumstances, give-in to an owner's insistence of wire payments. Pay by credit card. If the property is a fake or the owner's account has been hacked then you can still get your money back.
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