Vacation rental sites are growing in popularity and so is the potential to fall victim to fake rental ads.
Sasha Estrada learned the hard way. She thought she was booking her Hawaiian vacation through VRBO.com, a popular vacation rental website run by HomeAway. But the listing wasn’t real and the Fairfield woman didn’t realize her mistake until she wired $5,100 to a stranger who disappeared with her money.
The Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection said Estrada’s mistake could have been prevented if she had recognized the red flags.
RED FLAG 1: The price of the rental is too good to be true.
“It was huge. It was I think it was a six-bedroom house. And it was for a really good price, and that probably should have been a red flag,” said Estrada.
RED FLAG 2: The property owner doesn’t want to communicate through the website
Estrada contacted the property owner, who called himself Brandon, through the site’s messaging platform. Estrada said Brandon responded to her message, and asked her to email him with the dates she wanted to reserve and how many people would be staying in the home.
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Brandon told Estrada he was having technical problems with VRBO, so the conversation continued over email, Estrada said.
“Folks will pressure you to act quickly. They'll say, hey I'll give you my phone number, we can text about this, we can email about this," DCP spokesperson Lora Rae Anderson said.
Anderson said using the internal messaging service allows the company to monitor the conversation, which can help you in a dispute.
“If you have a complaint later, they’ve tracked your conversations, they’ve tracked your messages. And they know what went on in that transaction,” Anderson said.
RED FLAG 3: The property owner asks you to wire money, send gift cards or cash to pay for the rental.
Estrada said she tried to book the reservation using a web link sent by Brandon that looked like it came from HomeAway, but her credit card couldn’t be processed.
When Estrada called HomeAway, she said an agent told her there was no record of her reservation. But Estrada said the company didn’t warn her the listing might be a fake.
"They kept pushing it back to the owner, for me to get more information from the owner, deal with payments from the owner," Estrada said.
Estrada said the next email she received from Brandon included instructions for a bank transfer. She checked VRBO.com and thought it was OK.
The website says, “If a property does not offer online booking, you can contact the owner by sending a message with your dates and details. Once your request is received, the owner or property manager of the property will contact you via email with either a payment request or a specific link to access their payment instructions.”
But right underneath that statement is guidance for travelers to avoid sending cash or using an instant money transfer.
Still, Estrada wired $5,121.16 through a service called TransferWise.
The following day, Estrada received an email from VRBO alerting her that the listing was deactivated and to stop all communications with the property owner.
Estrada immediately contacted HomeAway, TransferWise and the police. She said they all advised her to contact her bank to cancel the transaction.
By the time she did, the transfer had already gone through and the money was gone.
Estrada’s bank then performed a chargeback to retrieve the funds from TransferWise.
A spokesperson for TransferWise told NBC Connecticut, “The chargeback process is meant to protect customers from ‘unauthorized transfers,’ which means that someone else made the bank transfer without the account holder's consent. It doesn’t protect customers from fraud losses where they actually did authorize the bank transfer, which the customer did in this case.
“Her only recourse now that the fraud has already occurred is to work with law enforcement, who may be able to help her get the money bank. On our end, TransferWise fully cooperates with law enforcement where there is any evidence of wrongdoing.”
The company said once the funds are deposited into the recipient’s account, TransferWise does not have authorization to remove them.
A HomeAway spokesperson told NBC Connecticut Responds, “Although [Sasha Estrada] was offered booking assistance by our customer support team, she ended up taking her transaction offline where we can’t monitor for fraudulent activity.”
HomeAway said Estrada is eligible for a $1,000 refund under its terms. If Estrada had booked and paid through the website, HomeAway said she would be entitled to a full refund.
Estrada and her family ended up booking a resort for their Hawaiian vacation.
