Preventing fraud and scams
Although the majority of enquiries received through Ownerhomeholidays are genuine, you may occasionally be targeted by scammers, whose sole purpose is to fraudulently obtain money, by deceptive means. Therefore it is always advisable that you approach each enquiry vigilantly and know how to spot potential scam, or fraudulent emails. If you are ever in doubt, please contact us for assistance and never proceed with an enquiry/provisional booking without being 100% sure about the enquirer.
A common type of scam is when the enquirer offers to send a cheque for payment of the rental period, for a sum in excess of the actual booking cost. They will then request that you either refund the difference by money transfer or similar instant clearing method, as soon as you receive the cheque OR, ask you to forward the excess payment on to a third party claiming that they made your payment out for too much by mistake.
Although the banking system will in most cases show a payment in to your account as soon as you deposit it, those funds are not cleared and can be withdrawn by the bank if a cheque turns out to be fake, or there are not enough funds in the drawers account. If you have made a refund payment for the excess before the cheque has cleared, you would loose this money, as it's virtually impossible to track or trace.
There are several clues to help you identify a scam enquiry:
- The enquirer requests that you refund the overpayment of balance on receipt of payment.
- The enquiry may be written in 'broken' English and too formal in tone. However, due to our worldwide coverage, this could simply be because the enquirer is not fluent in English, or English is not their first language.
- The enquirer provides you with excessive and irrelevant information, unnecessary for proceeding with an enquiry/booking.
- The enquiry may be for an unusually long period of time, therefore justifying a large payment to you.
- The enquirer offers to pay by Instant- cash wire, Western Union or Money Gram.
- The enquirer asks you to contact them by phone to a premium rate number which usually begins with the prefix 09.
Not all scam attempts will be transparent, so we advise all of our advertisers to remain vigilant at all time when answering booking enquiries and contact us if you are unsure or need any advice.
At Ownerhomeholidays we do our utmost to ensure that enquiries received by our advertisers are genuine, but unfortunately we cannot block all fraudulent emails. Please do not hesitate to Contact Us if you feel that an enquiry you have received may be a scam attempt.
