Rental Advice - Spanish Homeowners.

Fraudulent Enquiries

Email enquiries sent to you through Rentaccomspain.com are in the main genuine booking requests from someone interested in your holiday home in Spain. This does not mean that you should be complacent however as although we do monitor all email enquiries as far as possible, scammers are very resourceful and some might still get through to our advertisers.

Fortunately many fraudulent enquiries are easy to spot with a large number of them originating from Nigeria, but you should still remain vigilant as you check and ultimately reply to your enquirers.

The most common scam is know as "The Overpayment Scam". This is where your holidaymaker asks if you will accept (or even sends you a cheque for) more money than your rental fee.

They will then keep checking with you to see if you have received the cheque yet and if you have banked it. This is when they normally inform you that there's been a mistake and could you please refund the difference between your advertised rate and the actual amount they paid - "a personal cheque will be OK" they say.

Therein lies the problem. The original cheque is a fraud and, although it will show in your account, it is not available funds until it has cleared the banking system - which could take 8 weeks. In the meantime, your perfectly good cheque has been cashed by the scammer never to be seen again.

The easiest way to avoid this scam is simply to NEVER accept more than the amount due.

Some more clues to help you spot potential scams are:

• You receive enquiries which are written using very poor English and / or grammar (some genuine enquiries will be from non-English speakers - so tread carefully).

• Some enquiries may be received from individuals who are overly formal on the first contact and will introduce themselves as Doctor, Pastor or Reverend to create a false sense of security.

• Any enquirer who asks to book accommodation for their company, but uses a non-company email address as a contact.

• Be wary if an enquirer, at any point in the transaction, asks to pay you by bank transfer. Giving out your bank details to anyone is not secure so check with your bank about accepting payment by some other, more secure method.

• Enquiries which give extremely short notice (i.e. 1 - 2 days before departure) where they ask to pay you by cheque or bank transfer. These methods can take between 3 - 10 days before you will have cleared funds (or even up to 8 weeks if the payment is by a foreign cheque).

• If an enquirer mentions the payment will be coming from someone other than them - beware. Some genuine enquiries may be received like this but not many people will be paying for someone else's holiday.

• Generalised emails such as "I am looking to rent your villa/apartment/house ...". These indicate mass emails and should be disregarded.

See our Rental Scams pages for more advice and examples of some common scams.