“OWNERSDIRECT HOLIDAY” VICTIM LOST £2,790 AFTER PHISHER HACKS INTO EMAIL

Scammer intercepted owner's reply and we have lost all our money and OwnersDirect will refund only £700. We appear to have lost £2,790 after booking a holiday villa in France using the OwnersDirect web site. This was for our main holiday for my family. We found a house we liked, used the "contact the owner" page to inquire about availability, and were pleased when we got an email from the property owner, Robin Lee, saying the villa was free. He confirmed that, if we wished to book, we would need to complete a booking contract and return this to him. Once returned, he would provide the owner's bank account details (leading us to believe he was acting on behalf of the actual owner). There was a slight delay in returning the contract and, at one point; I tried to call the contact number to confirm whether he wished to be paid in sterling or euros. He did not answer, but I left a voicemail and received an email back. I made the transfer via my online bank, and sent proof of transfer. That evening we did not feel completely at ease with having transferred such a large amount of money so we telephoned again and, again, got an answerphone. We went back to the OwnersDirect web page, linked to the property owner's web site and located a further number in France. When we rang it quickly emerged that the real owner had no booking. He said he had emailed us to confirm that there was no availability. Our inquiry appeared to have been intercepted and we had been dealing with a scam artist. The real owner said he had been called by another family that day, too, who were also going to transfer money. We completed the "online security issue form" on the OwnersDirect web page (which said we would get a response in 12 hours). It did not respond, but copied us into a general email warning of possible problems with this property's web page. Our bank has told us the money has gone.      

OwnersDirect has been less than sympathetic, keeping us on hold for half an hour, and then clearly reading from a script. It seemed to imply that it was the owner's fault that their email account had been compromised. We feel £2,790 is an extremely large amount to lose. I am thankful we did not drive all the way to the South of France to find we had nowhere to stay! JL Warwick This will come as no consolation, but we first warned about this fraud a year or so ago when another reader lost a similar sum in similar circumstances although, in their case, they had used OwnersDirect's sister site HomeAway. As in that case, OwnersDirect this week maintained that your loss is nothing to do with the company and, as a result, it will not be helping you, over and above its standard terms. It says the fraud came about because the home owner's Yahoo account was hacked in other words; the scammer intercepted your initial request, and pretended to be him. The website does offer a basic guarantee against phishing fraud, but only up to a paltry £700. That still leaves you £2,000 out of pocket. It says the refund will take six to eight weeks to process. OwnersDirect says: "Our advice for travellers to protect themselves from a phisher is to call the owner directly on the number provided on the listings and not from one provided in any correspondence. The owner should always be available for a call, and by calling them the traveller limits the risk substantially." It also says that your experience is very rare. However, if it is as rare as it suggests, perhaps the company should increase the basic guarantee to a more meaningful sum. Many of the holiday rentals listed on its sites are for much more than £700. Which leaves the final question: what should others do when booking accommodation in this way? We would be very wary of sending £2,800 to an unknown person's bank account. The OwnersDirect site offers its own insurance against fraud, but it costs 2.3% of the booking fee. That would have added more than £60 to your booking a nice moneyspinner for those behind it, but of course, it would have been money well spent in your case. The best advice is to talk to the owner on the number on the original listing, and be wary when using this site to book villas, and of any emails sent by owners. If the rental sum is large, consider paying the insurance, or agreeing half up front with the rest in cash on arrival. Better still, avoid OwnersDirect and HomeAway until they do more to resolve this problem or offer a decent insurance to bookers for free.

We welcome letters but cannot answer individually. Email us at consumer.champions@theguardian.com or write to Consumer Champions, Money, The Guardian, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please include a daytime phone number                                               Culled from Guardian