Free-Rentals Vacation Rentals

Exactly 1 month ago, we got a $50 USD donation from Free-Rentals.com member. Just today, he refuted his paypal donation. I got an email from PayPal saying that the “buyer” disputes sending us $50 USD and has requested the money back. Here is the email I got from paypal…

 ”A review of recent transactions indicates that you received an unauthorized payment. This means that the PayPal account holder did not authorize the payment you received.”

I log into PayPal and counter the dispute giving my side of the story. Paypal has a simple text box for me to explain my verion of the story. I point out that, we are a donation based system only, we never ask for money, we only accept donations IF and WHEN a member benefits from the services of our website. 
 
The paypal form says to post any email conversations I had with the person. The person never contacted me, and if they did, and explained why they weren’t happy with our free services, and why they regret donating to us, then I’d most likely have just refunded their money.
 
Well, of course, I spent too long typing in my story to Paypal, so their website timed me out and booted me, forcing me to re-login, and losing my story. So I have to write it again. 
 
Exactly 2 seconds after submitting my counter claim, PayPal sends me the following email…
 
As you know, we have been reviewing the transaction detailed below. Our
investigation is now complete and we have returned the funds to the PayPal account holder.

Now… I’m not linguist… But does a 2 second machine handling of email really count as an “investigation”? 
 
There was no investigation…. PayPal should have just written me back and said… “Look, we are too lazy to really look into this, so we’ll side with the buyer, because well hey, it’s the safer side with him right? I mean, wouldn’t you do the same if you were us?”.
 
Now, if this was all there was to the story, it wouldn’t be a big deal. I wouldn’t care. If someone wasn’t happy with their donation, and they wanted it back, so be it. But there is a reason this story is particularly frustrating.
 
You see, the person who donated to Free-Rentals.com, and then 1 month later, took their donation back… is a SCAMMER!
 
We have had problems with this scammer in the past. They create a fake listing on our website, in the New York Area… the only real information is the email address. Potential renters contact him to rent the apartment in New York… through email coorespondance, the scammer requests a security deposit be made to secure the booking.
 
The victim makes the security deposit, and then arrives in New York and has nowhere to stay. Follows the map, directions to the rental apartment, but it’s phoney, doesn’t even exist. The scammer makes off with the victims security deposit.
 
Now, most vacation rental directory websites charge a steep fee for owners to sign up and list a property. Free-Rentals.com however does NOT charge any fee upfront, so it’s easy for these type of scammers to post a fake ad and try and scam a potential renter out of a security deposit.
 
We have put security measures in place to combat this scam, and it’s working fairly well. 

In this particular case, the scammer caught on to the fact they we kept deleting his fake accounts, so what did he do? He donated, so we wouldn’t be flagged that he was a possible scammer and posted a fake account…. never did we suspect that PayPal would give this scammer his money back after he had a month of trying to work over his scam on our customers.
 
Here are the details of his fake listing he had posted on Free-Rentals. I have since deleted it.
  
Name: Matt Low mattlow101@aol.com
Phone: 206-888-6955
Rental Name: Matt Rental
Address: 172 W 67th St New York, New York 10023 United States 
 
HERE IS HIS SCAM this person is running.
 
Here is the PayPal information this scammer used to donate $50 to free-rentals.com and then take it back:
 
STEVEN STROGOFF
12 ESTABROOK ROAD
SWAMPSCOTT, MA 01907
United States
 
If you don’t think crime pays, check out STEVE “SCAMMER” STROGOFF’s $670k house right near the Atlantic Coast. But Steven The Scammer may not be acting alone.
 
We track the IP address of everyone entering into the free-rentals.com website. This scammer, the actual person who posted the fake property listing, comes from the United Kingdom. (which as matter of factly, I’ve come to learn from experience that there are about as many internet scammers per capita from the UK as there are from Nigeria).
 
PayPal… Your “investigation” is as phoney as this scammer’s property listing. One of the measurements we used in determining if a property listing was real or fake, was whether or not they donated, paid money to us… because afterall, scammers stay in business because the money flows in one direction, and one direction only… and that is TO THEM.
 
PayPal, by allowing this scammer to take back the money, you are essentially allowing them a free month of trying to scam people. Please do us all a favor and look up the word “investigation”. If you really investigated this case, and this person “STEVEN STROGOFF”, you would discover that he is a scammer working with other scammers in the UK. 

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 19th, 2008 at 11:08 amand is filed under Scams. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.