Eight tips to avoid booking on a scam site
Holiday accommodation scams are constantly being uncovered in Finland. Police have become aware of a number of cases where holiday cottages or hotel rooms for rent have been reported on internet plots that did not even exist in the end.
POLICE warns that online rental cottage scammers are becoming more and more professional, and scams can be difficult to identify.
In order to avoid incidents, the police have compiled a list of tips on things to pay attention to when renting a cottage, hotel room and other holiday accommodation option. Here is eight tips to avoid booking on a scam site.
1. Hurrying to make an order
Alarm bells should ring, according to the police, if the booker feels that the renter is pressuring to pay for the entire cottage reservation in a huge hurry at the risk that the booking will otherwise pass.
2. New surcharges will emerge
If, after the cottage reservation has taken place, new payments related to the reservation are constantly appearing, it may be worth questioning the seller’s reliability. In cases investigated by the police, the seller could only ask for a booking fee at first, but suddenly there was a rush to pay for the entire booking at once. In addition, new charges could be made for accessories and cleaning, among other things.
3. Payment to an individual’s account
If the rent of a cottage or hotel room has to be paid in installments to the bank account of one or more private individuals, it is worth making sure that the booking is correct, the police reminds.
4. Check the company
If the tenant appears in the name of the company, it is a good idea to put the name of the company into a search engine and see what kind of experience others have had about that company. If the company is right and everything seems to be fine, but you still have doubts about whether the person is employed by that company, contact the company and ask if that person works there.
5. No contacts or people
Today, companies almost always have their own websites. If you can’t find any contact information or people on the company’s website, it’s worth questioning the whole company. Also, if the website you are booking accommodation is very new, you may want to consider making a payment.
6. Verified items
Sites with tourist destinations that are well-known and long-established, and where items cannot be added or maintained by anyone other than site maintenance usually have verified, existing items, and trusted tenants.
7. Does the cottage or hotel address exist
The address of the cottage or hotel can be entered into the online map service and see if there is any residential building on the map at all.
8. Check the pictures
Internet search engines can also try to make sure where the images are coming from. If the image of a cottage, hotel or other accommodation that is alleged to be in Finland bounces off a foreign website and the location is claimed to be different, the alarm bells should already ring.
Hopefully these tips will help you identify scam pages.
At Finland Travel Info Oy, we strive to help tourists find the right and existing accommodation and avoid scams. We recommend that travelers make a reservation directly from the destination.
ALL items on the finlandtravel.fi website are confirmed, verified and added by the website maintenance.