Craigslist scams were something I once regarded as a mythical event often heard about, but never seen. However, right now, as we speak, there are several vacation rental scam postings for Apostolic dating site City Beach on Craigslist currently taking thousands of dollars from potential guests, tarnishing our image in Panama City Beach as a safe destination, ruining vacations and causing harm to the integrity of credible locals.
I know, I know. Craigslist today, I wanted to talk about something very important that has been affecting our Panama City Beach Vacation Rental company the last several weeks.
The particular property of ours that is being used for their scam is one of our Penthouse condos. This particular property has been booked through October for months, and since availability is tight this summer, an panama property is very alluring to potential guests. When I was originally authoring this post, I was planning to link to the scammers post on Craigslist, but it has finally been removed. In the scam listing, they just copied our text and used it verbatim in addition to using our pictures.
All of it they got right from our website. In the listing, they provide no contact information, just the ability for the potential guest to send an email to the person who listed it 1st red flag. Numerous victims have told us this particular scammer is from Australia. In addition, this particular scammer is actually using my first and learn more here name on his fabricated rental agreement and has told some, via email, that they are me.
However, it should be a flag for you to ask more panama and make a greater attempt to validate the rental property and the person renting the property. All of the scam postings I have found, the scammer states that dogs craigslist cats are ok. This is an extra check-box you have to city when you put up the listing.
They are checking this box intentionally in hopes of luring a greater number of people into their trap. First off, anything you find on Craigslist for rent, please proceed with absolute and complete caution.
There are things you can do to protect yourself.
There are some legitimate people trying to rent their property on Craigslist, and those people will be willing to talk to you over the phone panama rent their property. Ask for a phone number and call them. Ask them questions about the property, ask them about the area, and get a feel for who they are. A good way to figure out if they are legitimate is ask them questions about the area panama a local or someone who travels to the area frequently would know.
Anyone can call them and verify our membership. The more well known the references the better. I know or know of most businesses in the area and I have a vast, deep network of acquaintances in Panama City Beach. Lastly, use the protection that likely comes with your major credit card. Issuers like Discover and American Express are widely accepted and offer unparalleled consumer craigslist if something goes afoul. I understand some individual property owners may not be able to accept credit cards, and this will affect them negatively, but this is one of the important safeguards that you as a consumer should hold dear and not go beyond the protection of.
Side note 2: I understand your comments in that as an individual property owner, PayPal is one of the easiest ways to accept city cards or online payments. But, as a consumer, the safest way to ashleyxrosee onlyfans would be to use your major credit card since you are likely to be able to dispute the charges if something goes afoul.
For those that have found the perfect place and PayPal is the only way you can pay for it — ask lots read article questions, do everything mentioned here to validate the property and the person renting it, listen to your gut, and you should be just fine. Craigslist will automatically remove a posting if it city flagged enough times. You can flag a listing by clicking on the Prohibited link at the top.
Here is a link to my recipe — you can click on it, create a free account and activate the recipee to get the alerts as well. This is one of my properties that is regularly being used in this scam.
Additionally, you can post links to other listings that come up that you suspect are scams in the comment section of this post and we can all look at them and decide together if they are scams.
Then explain in the listing what is going on, that it is a scam and who to contact directly for questions provide phone number. Please watch Craigslist for scams, please help us shut these scammers out and please be careful if you are trying to rent through Craigslist. View all posts by Jason Koertge. Jason, thank you for making us aware of this scam.
I own a condo in PCB and rent it myself via vrbo and homeaway, therefore I hate to hear that some crooks are using other peoples property for personal gain. PayPal is a great service for those of us that only have one condo to rent. Plus there are lots of legitimate merchants world wide that use PayPal.
I have found that PayPal is faster than using the credit card service offered by vrbo and homeaway. I have a lot of guest that prefer to pay with a personal check or money order. As the condo owner, when City accept a personal check, I am the one taking on the risk. I do provide a toll free telephone number on my listings which is also used by my everyday businessbut prefer e-mail because me and the potential city can maintain a written record of our conversation.
Renting real estate is a two way street. Anyway……thanks again for the info, panama not sure we need to tell people that giving a credit card number over the telephone to a total stranger is the only way to pay to keep from being scammed.
Keep us the good work! Like Like. Hey Bill, I absolutely understand. I added a panama side notes to offer clarification in the city as this was in no way intended to completely scare people away from PayPal. I merely intended for it to serve as a red flag. We screen our guests very carefully and we still run into issues from time to time. Very informative, but I use PayPal all the time and would not consider that a red flag. PayPal usually favors the buyer if there is a complaint, so PayPal is a legit way to pay.
If there is no account for paypal, a credit card can still be used through them. Jason, thank you so very much for posting this.
BEWARE – Panama City Beach Rentals Craigslist Scam
I only wish there was a way to post it in newspapers in all states. I believe it is well worth it. I have never used Craigslist for finding vacation rentals…. I have however used this list to post items for sale here recently. After my own experience I will not use this web-site again. I was sent many emails that after reading them you know they were from serious people. I have used VRBO. I wait until I receive their email concerning the rental property to see how they word their response to craigslist. In other words they make you feel special!
Panama are great but, actually calling the craigslist for a chat is much better…. It is a shame some are taken in by these scam artist but, it happens.
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I work in Property Management and we have this happen on our rental home ads. Just a suggestion for you, as these watermarks also make your ads less desirable to copy.
Jason — Please stop adding to the paranoia! To blanketly make a statement that anyone using PayPal is someone who should be suspect of illegal renting activities is totally irresponsible and damaging to my future rental propsects.
Do you really think if I use PayPal that people are any safer to the risk of craigslist payments then if they used PayPal? If you do then you are very ignorant as to what the true security issues are.
As an IT Sr. Executive with a Fortune company, I can assure you that you are wrong in assuming that anything craigslist with PayPal is a sign there is something shady going on. I would ask that you rescind that comment. If you would like to discuss further, call me at And for people looking to rent condo at Emerald Isle in Visit web page, please have no worries in renting from me just because I use PayPal as my payment vendor.
I will stand behind any contract we sign, unlike Jason who gets to make any staements he wants without any ramifications. Totally disappointed Jason, I have followed this blog for years and this I could not believe what was reading. Larry Cecchini Emerald Isle emeraldisle gmail. Not adding to the paranoia Larry. This had to be done. I did update some text to emphasize that the PayPal payment is only intended to be a red flag that should underscore the need for more information.
Jason, Thank you for posting this! Yes I have looked and called a few on craigslist. They was going to meet me at the condo with the keys. One of the places he had was at Edgewater and when I ask him for the address he give me a address for a fast food, said he just got his number wrong. I found out city the men did not own any condos and when I started asking alot of questions they never email me back.
This is good info and I wish we could get it on face book. Anyone have any ideas on how to scam a scammer? Hello just wanted to give you a quick heads up. The text in your content seem to be running off the screen in Safari. The design and style look great though! Hope you get the issue resolved soon. Many thanks.