Booking the perfect holiday for 11 relatives was not a simple task for Helen Raine, but after an unusual issue with the payment, the mum is desperately hoping she has not fallen victim to an online con artist...
It’s no easy feat to find accommodation for three grandparents, four parents and four children at Christmas; not, at least, if you want to avoid everyone killing each other over the festive period.
For hours, if not days, I trawled through palatial villas (too expensive), forest cabins (too many mosquitoes) and hotels (nowhere to sit together in the evening while the kids sleep), only to draw a blank, until I happened upon the perfect place.
It was a spacious villa in Puerto Rico, a few metres from the beach, with an apartment upstairs for the oldies.
The house appeared on a popular travel website, loaded with gold and silver awards, rave reviews and appealing pictures of former guests beaming as they borrowed free snorkeling equipment or sipped cocktails on the terrace.
By e-mail, I confirmed with the owner, Jennifer*, that the place was indeed free for our dates.
As we negotiated, my phone rang. It was Jennifer.
“I just thought it might be easier if I gave you a call,” she trilled.
We hashed out the rest of the details and then got down to the last issue: payment.
“What I do,” said Jennifer, “in fact, what I’ve always done, is just request a personal cheque for 50 per cent of the total amount.”
Deep in the prehistoric part of my brain, something stirred. But my rational neocortex brushed the feeling aside.
Jennifer was nice! Her guests loved her! And if I turned her down, I’d have to go back to those tedious sites and start all over again.
Too polite (and desperate) to argue, I was already jotting down her address.
I am not a total idiot; I did at least check that the address she gave me matched the accommodation.
In fact, I researched Jennifer as best I could. But in the end, I posted a cheque for a very substantial amount of money (Christmas rentals for 11 people do not come cheap).
Jennifer duly e-mailed to say she had received it and it was cashed. And then the worry set in.
I mulled over all those horror stories of people who turned up to find no Jennifer, no accommodation and certainly no free snorkelling.
Jennifer was nice! Her guests loved her! And if I turned her down, I’d have to go back to those tedious sites and start all over again
I would have wasted hundreds of family euros and everywhere else would be full for Christmas. But, eventually, I accepted that worrying about it wasn’t going to actually fix the problem and we wouldn’t know just how big an imbecile I was until we got there.
And then my brother-in-law asked whether he could pay the balance on arrival by credit card.
I e-mailed Jen to check and, in return, I received one of those horrible spammy emails that parrot your query back to you without actually giving a reply.
My heart sank faster than the lift in Blackpool Tower. I went a bit cold and clammy and my hands started to shake.
“Noooooooo,” wailed the neocortex. “I told you,” said the reptilian part smugly, turning away in disgust.
I had an urgent dinner date so could not hang around frantically Googling “Jennifer + Scam”. I found a different e-mail address for her online, dashed off a desperate message and went out to moan to my friends about my idiocy in sending hundreds of dollars into the ether.
They tried hard not to look horrified, mostly failing. The next morning, bleary-eyed from a night of imagining my extended family sleeping on the beach, I staggered to the computer.
There was an e-mail from Jennifer giving us driving directions.
I am almost entirely comforted. If this is a scam, it’s an exceedingly elaborate one; once your average crook has the cash, they generally bow out of any further contact.
But if it turns out that Jennifer is not quite what she seemed, I won’t be alone.
Australian travellers lost more than €170,000 to scams in the first few months of last year, with cons including fake discount accommodation vouchers, bogus rental listings and agencies that open for a month or so, only to vanish with their clients’ cash (check that agents are ATOL protected before you book to avoid this).
In November, online travel agent Booking.com was hit by fraudsters who hacked into their system to contact customers directly, asking for “prepayment” on reservations.
Around 10,000 customers were affected but the agency refunded all monies. The UK Association of Chief Police Officers reported 1,015 scam flight ticket sales in 2013, about a fifth of all travel frauds.
The bottom line is if a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is: research the company you are booking with carefully before you part with any cash.
The fact is that until I arrive in Puerto Rico later this month, we just won’t know whether Jennifer really is the owner of a delightful holiday rental or just another shark in infested internet waters.
Whatever happens, the great price has not been worth the loss of peace of mind: next time, I’ll be booking via a reputable website.
*Names changed to protect the (hopefully) innocent.