How to Identify Cottage Rental Scams

I had an email from Zac Gribble at Cottages in Canada this morning. He wanted to share some information on a scam that is pretty widespread at the moment.

“Over the last few months, several con artists have been attempting to scam cottage owners throughout Canada and have unfortunately been targeting listings on CottagesinCanada.com. The scam enquiry is usually too good to be true – i.e. A full month or even the entire season booked in 1 enquiry. Usually the con artist claims to be based overseas, often in the UK. The con artist then mails a forged cheque or money order to the cottage owner either directly or through an intermediary located in Canada, but there is a gross overpayment and the cheque amount is usually several thousand dollars more than the agreed upon cottage rental price. Finally, the con artist requests that you cash their cheque and send the difference back to them with a new cheque. As it can take several weeks for your bank to discover the fraudulent cheque, it may appear at first that their cheque has cleared. DO NOT REIMBURSE ANY OVERPAYMENT UNTIL YOU ARE COMPLETELY SATISFIED THAT THE ORIGINAL CHEQUE HAS CLEARED.”

Zac’s recommendation is that you only accept immediate money transfers or credit cards for any questionable long-term overseas bookings, or accept a deposit cheque well in advance so that there is plenty of time (2 months!) for the cheque to clear in your bank account.

Craig White at CottageLINK identifies several types of scam on his owner resources page . You can usually tell a scam email by the wording which tends to be pretty generic rather than focused on your property. The ‘reservation’ is often being made on behalf of other people and may refer to groups of people ‘visiting your country’. Some of the ones I have received recently are from a “Dr”, with an English sounding name, yet the spelling, grammar and use of language is clearly that someone whose first language is not English, nor of a professional person.

These scams come in a lot of different guises, but the bottom line is that the only way these con artists make money, is if you send them some. Genuine rental clients just don’t do this, nor do travel agencies.

I’m interested in hearing about some of the scams that may come into your inbox and how you deal with them.