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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrentals.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
iopbeachhouse Mar 18, 2012 7:06 PM (in response to sophie)This site has a ton of listings. Some I have seen on VRBO/HA in my area. Luckily, I looked through all 28 pages and didn't find my house.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrentals.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
carol Mar 18, 2012 7:27 PM (in response to sophie)I'm not able to find the site -- Server not found message. Can you repost with an active link or check your spelling?
Or have they taken it down?
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrentals.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sophie Mar 18, 2012 7:28 PM (in response to carol)so sorry....www.bidvacationrental.com
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrentals.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
carol Mar 18, 2012 8:13 PM (in response to sophie)Thanks, that link worked. Here's an active link for others:
Luckily, mine isn't on it.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrentals.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
mauioceanview Mar 18, 2012 9:05 PM (in response to carol)oh my, thank you for this posting. I found 3 of our condos, one with TWO listings (old pictures and older pictures). I called the 1-877 number and left a message with my name and number and said that I did not post any listings with them and was livid that I found four listings of my condos on their website, would they return my call.
of course, I do not expect a call back.
The good news is that I tried submitting an inquiry and there seems to be a problem with that. it didn't go through.
What do we do about this????
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrentals.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
mauioceanview Mar 18, 2012 9:35 PM (in response to mauioceanview)well what do you know - this outfit has a facebook page. I went on it (without 'liking' it) and found that the page owner's name is Jeff Anderson. I sent him a direct message, asking him to remove my listings and telling him I'd alerted other owners in our area of his site.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrentals.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sophie Mar 18, 2012 9:44 PM (in response to mauioceanview)I think more needs to be done than to just request they remove our information. This is a blatant scam and these people must be held responsible for stealing peoples property info and capitalizing on it. I'll be talking with the other owners in my area whose properties are also listed tomorrow to see what they are going to do. I am going to go on some travel forums and post some forums on this company also.
It's been almost 3 years since they started the fb page and there has been no activity on it and they only have 11 friends.
This makes me so mad!
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrentals.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
mauioceanview Mar 18, 2012 9:47 PM (in response to sophie)agreed. I have emailed VRBO (since their office is closed for the day), emailed all the AOAOs of our condos that are involved asking them to pass the info on to all the owners, emailed all the vacation rental agencies I could think of in Kihei....
any other ideas? I'd love to follow through with them....
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrentals.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
tfv Mar 18, 2012 10:48 PM (in response to mauioceanview)Yap, they swiped my VRBO listing and placed it at their website. I was going to report their activities at http://www.fraud.org/, but since I read here that Mauioceanview has already sent an email to VRBO Support, I’ll wait what VRBO says. Please give us an update Mauioceanview. I figured, VRBO has dealt with this kind of website content copying before and is well equipped to handle this fraud.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
carol Mar 18, 2012 10:06 PM (in response to sophie)I don't think the whole site is bogus, it looks legit. I suspect the scammers just lifted your text and pix from your VRBO listing and created their own fake ads with them.
One interesting thing -- notice how that web site embosses the name of the website on the pictures? That makes it impossible for someone to lift the pictures and repost them somewhere else. If VRBO and Homeaway did the same, no one would be able to copy our web sites.
If anyone from customer relations is listening, can you forward this to your web design people as a suggestion?
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sophie Mar 18, 2012 10:40 PM (in response to carol)As soon as any website steals someone else's property description and photos, there is nothing "legit" about the website. Even if it's ONE property they have lifted, it makes the entire business a scam. This is not someone acting like the owner with my property and listing it, it's the website owner that is doing it. Comment's like "the site looks legit" is really hurtful to us who have had our properties identity stolen.
fyi, vrbo DOES watermark their photos with vrbo.com
Also, there are dead links on the webpage and what appears to be bogus phone #'s which if it was legit, we wouldn't see such careless practices.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
anja Mar 18, 2012 11:43 PM (in response to sophie)By checking the WHOIS on GoDaddy, I looked up who owns the domain name, BidVacationRental.com . The name and addresss of the owner is on Whilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles. The domain name details are as follows:
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, LLC (http://www.godaddy.com) Domain Name: BIDVACATIONRENTAL.COM Created on: 14-Sep-10 Expires on: 14-Sep-20 Last Updated on: 06-Oct-11
The owner person's name and contact number is also listed there, as well. Here's the thing: whether the guy who owns the domain name is the same guy that created the bogus website, plagerized the VRBO website and stole our photos remains to be seen {by the way OUR photos are watermarked with BidVacationRental.com logo}. In my opinion, it's not enough that HA lawyers issue a stiff warning to cease and desist using the text and images they robbed from VRBO website. I think Internet fraud authorities, {FBI?} need to track this outfit down.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
anja Mar 18, 2012 11:15 PM (in response to carol)No ---- this is not a legitimate website. It's a criminal operation!
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
anja Mar 18, 2012 11:10 PM (in response to sophie)I just found my property there too. It seems as if they've taken text and photos from VRBO. This is definitely NOT a legitimate website. This is criminal...it's plagerism of texts and copyright infringment of the photos...and they are pretending to represent owners ..falsly...this website is criminal on all fronts. I called the toll free number and it's a recorded response...saying that all staff are busy...leave a message. This website has to be reported. Imagine, marketing our properties falsy...imagine innocent travelers robbed because our VRBO advertisements have been phished. We have to stop them.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
carol Mar 18, 2012 11:28 PM (in response to sophie)You all may be right that the entire site is a fraud -- some of the text they have on their "blog" has all the grammatical errors we've learned are suspicious. All blog entries are dated March 2011, none since. Also, none of the handful of homes I clicked on had any reservations on their calendars. Every listing has the same 877 phone number, so there are no individual owner phone numbers.
I spotted a house one town over from mine -- I'm checking with the owner via her Homeaway listing to see whether she knew her house was on this site.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sophie Mar 18, 2012 11:48 PM (in response to carol)Since there are watermarks on vrbo pictures that are NOT showing on bidvacation, I'm thinking the listings were taken from HA. For those of you that have found your properties on bidvacation, do you have listings on Homeaway, Vrbo or both? I list on both, there are no HA watermarks on the HA site.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sophie Mar 18, 2012 11:50 PM (in response to sophie)Actually I just answered my own question! They were taken from HA because there are 12 pictures of my property and I only just went to 12 (from 5) last month on vrbo. That was the only place they could have gotten ALL of my photos. Plus I know that they lifted them in late 2010 or early 2011.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
anja Mar 18, 2012 11:52 PM (in response to sophie)I only list on VRBO. All of my images that I uploaded to VRBO + my advertisement appears on this bogus website. My photos that I took are now watermarked with the BidVacationRental.com logo. Copyright infringment of photographs...and plagerism of texts. I can not believe that this website has been in operation for very long....people would have been robbed...they would have been reported by now.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sophie Mar 18, 2012 11:51 PM (in response to anja)Does anyone know if vrbo has always used watermarks?
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
msdebj Mar 19, 2012 2:37 PM (in response to sophie)I've asked that question a bit earlier.
HERE is what I found. I was working with our local tourism board to get my home on their site. When they did the "Test" page ( before they went live- and to their credit they were just "prototyping" my home's ad on their site ) - they'd taken my photos and info FROM VRBO --and those photos INCLUDED the VRBO watermark!!!
Of course it was a test page, and I provided them with other photos of my home before they went live.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
mauioceanview Mar 18, 2012 11:54 PM (in response to sophie)another owner who sent them an email got a response:
Just got a call back from this company saying they had removed my condos listing - of course I gave them a phone number that is not on the listing and didn't tell them the listing ...
They also claimed they have an agreement with HOMEAWAY (VRBO etc) to show these listings and that their role model is to contact the true owner/manager when an inquiry for a unit comes in. They would then get a fee to pass on the inquiry...
They further claim they have a disclaimer through out the site that NOT ALL CONDOS LISTED may be AVAILABLE.
EFfectively they are claiming to be the largest database of rentals - fast growing, etc but they get the rentals by pulling listings from other sites
This is very bad - perhaps even more so if their claim that homeaway is giving them permission to use their content.-
Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
mauioceanview Mar 18, 2012 11:58 PM (in response to mauioceanview)also, according to this facebook discussion group, call the FBI here on Maui. Another owner did, she writes: Hi all, I called the FBI. Maui FBI phone number is 808-565-4300. They are not working however there is a receptionist who took my information. I provided the fraudulent website address, their toll free number, my listing number per the website, I mentioned Steven Gatchell's name (another guy who has already been dealing with the FBI regarding this site) who referred us to call FBI. She is giving this to supervisor tomorrow. Told her to be expecting more calls.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
mauioceanview Mar 18, 2012 11:58 PM (in response to mauioceanview)Another owner writes: GoDaddy is very interested. They asked me to send an email to domaindisputes@godaddy.com with all the details I can find. They will look into it and potentially shut the site down. I would suggest we all check and do the same.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
anja Mar 19, 2012 12:07 AM (in response to mauioceanview)I looked up the WHOIS on GoDaddy...the domain owner is clearly listed there. GoDaddy can go after this and shut that website down easily enough. But, this is blantant criminal and this person(s) should be sought out.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
anja Mar 19, 2012 12:28 AM (in response to mauioceanview)I've just written to GoDaddy.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sophie Mar 19, 2012 12:00 AM (in response to mauioceanview)I just noticed that they have my exact location on their map of my homes. EXACTLY, the correct street, google view, etc. I am very very careful to not have any maps on my properties. How would they know the location so exactly?
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
tfv Mar 19, 2012 12:32 AM (in response to mauioceanview)==> They also claimed they have an agreement with HOMEAWAY (VRBO etc) to show these listings and that their role model is to contact the true owner/manager when an inquiry for a unit comes in. They would then get a fee to pass on the inquiry...
Comment: really now? But I (or We) never gave permission to HomeAway to provide the contents of our listings to any body else! I suspect that's exactly what happened - HomeAway provided the data. That's the only reason how Sophie's exact rental property address is showing in their website. I don't think HomeAway can do that because we never provided Owner's permission, and who is going to take responsibility for errors like putting Owner's property address when owner don't want it?
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
anja Mar 19, 2012 12:41 AM (in response to tfv)Moderator: please, respond. We need to know if BidVacationRental.com is associated in any way with HA. We need to know if HA gave permission for that website to use our property information for "bidding" on our properties...for marketing in any way whatsoever. Please help us to clear this up.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
mauioceanview Mar 19, 2012 1:49 AM (in response to anja)three of my four listings appear to be removed now, one is still there. I have been searching for 'Kihei' as that is where our condos are. I then typed in 'Wailea' (which is right next to Kihei) which brought me the exact same listings as Kihei. Then I got adventurous and typed 'Lahaina' which is a 45 minute drive away, same listings again.... fancy that.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
marym Mar 19, 2012 5:14 AM (in response to sophie)My home isn't on, thankfully, but I see a friend's whose home is on the site. I plan on sending him an e-mail to see if he has or has not placed his ad -will report back to the group!!
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
stjvilla Mar 19, 2012 7:42 AM (in response to sophie)Hope that HA will address this disturbing issue directly.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
marym Mar 19, 2012 8:36 AM (in response to sophie)Just heard from my friend - it's bogus - for him, they've lifted last year's ad. He's sending an inquiry to see what's going to happen and if/how he hears from anyone....! Will report back if I hear anything. HA/VRBO - if you're out there, this is quite serious - what are you doing about it??
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sophie Mar 19, 2012 10:21 AM (in response to marym)I just spoke to them. I asked how he could steal this information and do this and he said "The information is public knowledge and that they can put anything on this website that is public knowledge" I asked him what he does when he books a property and he said "If I didn't sign up with them, then they tell the prospective renter that the property isn't available" He said my houses will be off in 5 minutes.
I may call back and pretend I am a renter looking for a property and see what the process is. Anyone willing to use their property as the bait?
He is at his desk if anyone wants to call 877-288-1381
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
mauioceanview Mar 19, 2012 10:25 AM (in response to sophie)Sure use mine 315470 on his site
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
carol Mar 19, 2012 10:29 AM (in response to sophie)Apparently he's never heard of copyright laws. Homeaway has its site copyrighted with "all rights reserved". Again, we need Homeaway to take action here -- their lawyers can file a copyright infringement claim.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
lovespcb Mar 19, 2012 10:32 AM (in response to sophie)I also spoke with "Jo" and received the exact same information. He also told me my listing would be removed. I do understand how my listing is public information, but do not understand how the information can be used without my permission. Do we as owners have any recourse? My "listing" was #48859.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sophie Mar 19, 2012 10:38 AM (in response to lovespcb)Copyright laws still exist, even on the internet. Here is an example, when you list an item on Ebay and you use specific text on your auction page, someone else cannot come along and use that text on their auction page. Ebay will pull the listing immediately. What he is saying is bogus, it's just an excuse. Everything we have on our property page is intellectual property that we own and we must give permission to be used in any other venue.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sophie Mar 19, 2012 10:45 AM (in response to sophie)A little information from ebay's intellectual law, this isn't just auction, this has to do with internet copyright:
Not allowedYou're not allowed to use the following if you're not authorized to do so by the owner, its agent, or the law:
- Photos and text from other eBay users
- Photos and text copied from websites
- Scans from catalogs or advertisements
eBay members are not allowed to use images—including photos and other pictures—or text they didn't create themselves. Exceptions to this policy would be if they are authorized to do so by the owner, its agent, or the law.
Here are some examples of things members aren't allowed to do:
- A member likes part of a product description she's read and copies and pastes it into the listing she's writing. She didn't receive permission from the original writer to use their content.
- A member uses a picture from another member's listing without first getting their permission to use it.
- A member is unable to take her own photos of the item so instead copies a photo from another website without prior permission.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
iopbeachhouse Mar 19, 2012 11:06 AM (in response to sophie)OK - so this gets even more upsetting. Do a search of your property address. We do not use our property address in any of our advertisements, anywhere. However, I searched our address to see if it shows up anywhere. I found it advertised on three additional sites: tenant.com, olx.com and gogobot.com. Could only find a phone number to call the web designer for tenant.com. I spoke with Lisa who told me that HomeAway feed information to them. She will take the page down, but if it is a direct feed from HomeAway it will show up again. The pictures are very old (from a previous owner). I do not understand this at all. olx.com I sent an e-mail. gogobot.com I could not find any contact information at all. What is HomeAway doing? All three listings had very old pictures and old information. Who gets these inquiries? This is very upsetting!
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
cmballer Mar 19, 2012 11:07 AM (in response to sophie)Just talked to "Joe." Said he was in Florida. Denied being owner, but explained business model. Said
if they got an inquiry on our place, they would contact us and offer to reserve. Said $$ would have to go through them. I expressed my reservations about having my home listed without my permission. I asked if he would remove it if I wanted. He said yes. In the course of removing my listing, all listings on the site disappeared (though the home page remained accessible).
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
marym Mar 19, 2012 11:45 AM (in response to sophie)Wow - this is absolutely remarkable! I too just went to the site and there were 4 pages of rentals for our vacation rental - now there's NOTHING!! Apparently the heat is on!! Amazing! KUDOS TO SOPHIE for being so observant and alerting us all!!
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
marym Mar 19, 2012 11:47 AM (in response to sophie)As an afterthought, I'm disappointed with HA/VRBO's response to this ....or lack thereof. Has anyone heard any formal response to this obvious scam?
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sussi Mar 19, 2012 11:54 AM (in response to marym)I found my property there as well. They added to my descriptions and used the old name for my house. Unlike some of you, they do not seem to have my address. I checked the site this morning and a message comes up that the system is not able to find a vacatin rental in that area. They took all rentals off apparently. As usual the response from HA/VRBO is not to respond! To be honest I didn't want to contact VRBO for fear that they would supend my listing.
This is the information that shows on whois and go daddy (this is public information):
Registrant:
Bid Vacation Rental
11620 Wilshire Blvd.
STE 370
Los Angeles, California 90025
United States
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, LLC (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: BIDVACATIONRENTAL.COM
Created on: 14-Sep-10
Expires on: 14-Sep-20
Last Updated on: 06-Oct-11
Administrative Contact:
Ruth, Chrisitan
@covenantcapitalholdings.com
Bid Vacation Rental
11620 Wilshire Blvd.
STE 370
Los Angeles, California 90025
United States
+1.3106952925 Fax --
Technical Contact:
Ruth, Chrisitan
@covenantcapitalholdings.com
Bid Vacation Rental
11620 Wilshire Blvd.
STE 370
Los Angeles, California 90025
United States
+1.3106952925 Fax --
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
msdebj Mar 19, 2012 12:12 PM (in response to sussi)ecked -- mine's not there, but quite a few neighboring homes area ( all advertise in my area on VRBO). This is very disturbing.
Question to VRBO Moderator: When did VRBO start adding their watermark to our photos?
What are you going to do about someone else stealing the info, & pics with your watermarks?
Thanks
Debj
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
msdebj Mar 19, 2012 12:14 PM (in response to sussi)Sussi- WHY would VRBO suspend your listing? You haven't done a thing wrong (unless protecting your business's integrity is now reason for VRBO to boot you off!!)
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sussi Mar 19, 2012 12:19 PM (in response to msdebj)Debj,
They don't have any reason to do so, however, from reading other posts on this forum, it seems that that would be a distinct possibility. Sort of 'until you get things figured out, we will protect would be renters by suspending your listing'.
Sussi
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
msdebj Mar 19, 2012 12:45 PM (in response to sussi)Sussi, That would be so horribly wrong of them, if they would do that. WE are innocent, paying customers. We should be able to expect a reasonably secure product , and HA/VRBO shouldn't penalize their money makers for the company's inability to secure OUR vested interests.
This is going to be very interesting to follow.
deb
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sophie Mar 19, 2012 12:48 PM (in response to msdebj)Laura or Travis, can we get an acknowledgment/thoughts on this issue please?
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
msdebj Mar 19, 2012 12:50 PM (in response to msdebj)WOW! i too just went back to the bidvaca site and it says "NO Items found for your search area".
GREAT JOB folks!!!!! See? We CAN make a difference!!!! Congrats to all who jumped on this one!!!
Debj
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sophie Mar 19, 2012 12:51 PM (in response to msdebj)"Joe" probably didn't know what hit him this morning with all of us calling in yelling at him!
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
mauioceanview Mar 19, 2012 12:54 PM (in response to sophie)let's keep an eye on this and similar sites.... I did file a complaint with the FBI last night (online). And please please please when you come across a suspicious website like this, make us aware of it so we can protect ourselves!
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
msdebj Mar 19, 2012 1:00 PM (in response to mauioceanview)Maui, it's been several years since I dealt with RICO laws, but I have wonder if parts of those may apply in cases like this ( but who knows, with internet issues now days).
I did google my home's name this morning ( and the address), and was relieved, however I guess I'll have to do that once a week now-- just to be proactive. What a world!
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sophie Mar 19, 2012 1:00 PM (in response to mauioceanview)Check out bobzio.com and search for your property there also. My property isn't listed but there are quite a few from my area AND none of them have the owner contact name or phone, it's all a centralized booking system. I wrote a note about this website a few weeks ago because I think it looks suspicious. There are absolutely NO owner names or phone #'s on any properties.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
cmballer Mar 19, 2012 1:09 PM (in response to sophie)Any chance we're getting carried away here? Granted, copying the information from our listings without permission is wrong. But there's no evidence that they have taken any money from anyone. Taken at their word, they intend only to try to drive business to us, and earn a portion of the rental. Also taken at their word, they have so far not been very successful at it. I doubt the police or FBI will be interested in a copyright case. So is it a "scam," or just a lame attempt to pick up some crumbs in the burgeoning vacation rental business? It doesn't appear that anyone has shown up at the door of a vacation rental only to find they have a bogus reservation. This isn't a hack. Nobody's yanking anybody's listings.In fact, their duplication of your listing may actually help you in the search engines.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
carol Mar 19, 2012 1:29 PM (in response to cmballer)Copyright violations are not a criminal offense, they are subject only to civil litigation I believe, so of course the FBI is not going to be interested. FBI would get involved in some kind of fraud, but you are correct, this is really not a case of fraud or a scam. And as I think about it, I wonder if we ourselves would have to pursue the copyright infringement lawsuit -- Homeaway doesn't own the copyright to our material, just the original stuff it puts out. The only open question I have is where they get the addresses -- if these are not available anywhere online, then it does sound like like maybe the Homeaway database has been compromised or someone from Homeaway is feeding this data to bidvacationrental.com.
You all probably have gotten many phone calls asking you to list your property with this site or that site -- I get about one call every 10 days or so. Some of them say they can build the site for us from the info on our other sites -- I suspect that's what this is, and they are just ahead of themselves in building the sites BEFORE they have our permission.
So I think CMBaller is right, we should all take a deep breath and relax. If your site has been posted by them, go ahead and demand it be removed or you'll sue. But all a judge can do is order them to take down your property listing -- there really are no monetary damages here unless you can prove you lost revenues somehow or they gained revenues because of your listing.
[Funny idea -- not serious so please don't take it seriously] The one way to pursue monetary damages in a copyright infringement case like this is to have a clear statement on your copyrighted material such as "Permission to copy this material is granted provided user agrees to pay the holder of the copyright $1000 for the initial use and $100 per subsequent view". Then you could actually sue to enforce this contract.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
iopbeachhouse Mar 19, 2012 1:39 PM (in response to cmballer)Here's one problem I have with this... I don't use the address on any of my sites. If a previous guest googles the address because they can't remember where they found us before, these sites come up. One directed them to a phone number that is a local property manager who listed the house years ago. The other site, sent them to the main search page on HomeAway, but not MY site. The pictures were all very old 3-4 years ago when someone else owned the house. So my house is being used to attract potential renters to other managers and not to me, the owner! That doesn't set well with me.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
msdebj Mar 19, 2012 2:31 PM (in response to iopbeachhouse)iop,
Lots of issues involved.
You make a very good point.
That is a problem. Maybe you can contact the management company ( then follow up with a certified letter and a CC to the state's Real Estate Board or Commission) demanding, as the new owner, that the PM informs any inquiry for your property that they are no longer managing your property. Getting your address off line is really going to be tough in today's world.
Of course, any hungry, unscrupled PM will still work the lead. At least you'd have something on record. Proving someone stole business from you is another issue.
This is going to get complicated, since we're talking about both internet and real estate laws- the first being international at the worst, the second being State. I do think HA/VRBO has a copyright issue once they watermark our photos on their sites. But, if you have posted the same exact photos on a website, youtube, etc. that is not watermarked, etc., that's another issue.
As far as driving business to our homes, that remains to be seen. I've not seen many inquiries that google my home (by name) after they've seen it advertised on a site I advertise on.
My house has an actual name and when I google it It pops up on many clouds. All I can do is monitor that- as best as I can.
But, should I ever find someone trying to profit - without my written permission - from my home THAT does become a real, legal issue.
Welcome to cyberspace - it's good and it can suck- at the same time.
debj
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sodamo Mar 19, 2012 2:46 PM (in response to msdebj)Is there an easy way to watermark our own photos, before submitting to HA/VRBO or external site?
David
Sent from my iPad (3rd Gen) Please visit vacation.ninolehawaii.com
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
tfv Mar 19, 2012 3:16 PM (in response to cmballer)There are confidential information Owners provided VRBO/HomeAway when a listing is created, i.e. Owner’s name, email address & property address (some Owners don't want them published). I don't want VRBO/HomeAway to be giving them out, intentionally or unintentionally, because once they are out, the information can be sold to unscrupulous people. If our private information is out, that is a breach, and the possibility of using those information for ill intent is there. Who knows if those private information are now in the hands of Ukranian Scammers? Should I be worrying about my credit card?
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
tfv Mar 19, 2012 3:13 PM (in response to tfv)Someting is happening now with www.bidvacationrental.com website. If you try to display any listing or a specific locality, you will get the following:
"System is unable to find any vacation rental for the selected location.
Please try again by modifying your search."
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
mauioceanview Mar 19, 2012 3:17 PM (in response to tfv)yes, this has been the case for the past 3 hours or so. I fortunately did print out one of 'my' listings earlier this morning...
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sussi Mar 19, 2012 3:41 PM (in response to cmballer)I don't think it's about getting carried away. Many sites that I'm unfamiliar with have my listing on them but they ultimately link back to HA and MY contact information, not a 1 800 number. As far as "helping" on a search engine, I beg to differ. While my VRBO listing cannot be directly linked to Bid vacationrental because they, a) have the old name to my house b) the renters have no way of contacting me, should someone get ripped off by Bidvacationrental.com and the house name were correct they could write on Yelp etc..about being ripped off and someone googleing my house name would come across this information. So I definitely think it has potential to be detrimental to us.
Sussi
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
marym Mar 19, 2012 4:07 PM (in response to cmballer)Somehow, it just doesn't pass the smell test. If they'd asked me prior to doing it, maybe so. What concerns me is that we know nothing about it, and who knows where they're diverting the inquiries to....
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
cmballer Mar 19, 2012 4:33 PM (in response to marym)marym,
what's an ambassador?
cb
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sophie Mar 19, 2012 4:37 PM (in response to cmballer)cb:
Here is a link that tells you about the Ambassador program.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
marym Mar 19, 2012 4:44 PM (in response to cmballer)It's this sweet little designation HA has bestowed upon me, 'coz I like to spend time on this site!! (Indicative of too much time on my hands?? ) Seriously, there are a lot of us out there - we just love our VRs and love to talk to other VRowners and share our experiences.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sussi Mar 19, 2012 4:37 PM (in response to marym)The fact that they removed all of their listings speaks volumes no? If they were up to something good they would not have removed them. They'll likely change their website name and be back though!
Sussi
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sodamo Mar 19, 2012 2:43 PM (in response to sophie)Last night I looked for my property - not there. Did an area search and the listings seemed to match HA, not VRBO. Today, all the listings are missing. Good job
I really liked reading the blog entry about fraud.
David
Sent from my iPad (3rd Gen) Please visit vacation.ninolehawaii.com
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
anja Mar 20, 2012 6:49 PM (in response to sophie)First, sophie, thank you for telling us about this!
Last night, when I first saw Sophie's warning, I visited BidVacationRental.com and found my photos and text {text lifted from VRBO - not HA}. Second, I phoned the 877 # to get information about the cottage for rent {my cottage}. I wanted to fake an inquiry. But, I got a recorded message that all personnel were busy...leave a message, yadda yadda. I did not leave a message! But...a few minutes after my call, my own phone rang and the call was from Tampa Florida. It was 9:30 PM in Hawaii...which means it was 3:30 PM in Florida. I did not suspect the caller was connected in any way to BidVacationRental.com -- because I often get calls at all hours of the night in Hawaii {people typically do not check time zones when inquiring}. The Tampa caller listened to my "recorded message about how to inquire, etc.", and then I heard breathing for a couple of seconds...and then "click"...hang up. I now believe it was Jeff Anderson calling me ...because I clicked into the listing of my property...and phoned the 877#. That's how the website was set up to function. Jeff Anderson positioned himself as an online "booking agent" for us!
What we do not know:
Would Jeff A. have eventually contacted me {the owner} about a booking? {My opinion: I seriously doubt it.}
I logged off and went to bed. This morning, the site was "blank" --- as we all know.
Here's my opinion: Usually, when someone is doing something wrong and they have been "identified", they quickly close up shop and move operations elsewhere. If Jeff Anderson indeed had "permission" or if he has an formal 'association' or even an "affilate relationship with HomeAway", he would not have taken down the content so quickly after a couple of property owners complained to him.
I suspect: that Jeff Anderson could either be knowingly involved in an Internet scam...or it could very well be that Jeff Anderson was unknowingly involved. Why would I think that? There are millions of people around the world involved in Internet marketing...much of it is legitimate through legal, correctly managed affiliate programs associated with companies that sell goods and services...and home business opportunities. Jeff Anderson could be "innocently" new to Internet marketing -- or he could be a common cyper criminal.
So, this is what we do know:
The domain name, "BidVacationRental.com" was first created and registered on GoDaddy on Sept 14, 2010...and it was last updated on October 6, 2011. So, it's a young domain name -and- the website is quite young with little to no Internet 'history'. How to know? I checked for WayBack pages...which is an online "history" of every web page on the Internet --- to see if I could find any "development" of the website from it's conception to the present...and the only record of "BidVacationRental.com" on WayBack is that Google spidered it only one time...in February 2011. Therefore, the website, "BidVacationRental.com" is "young", little to no visible history of webpages under development. This is what I am thinking: Jeff Anderson {?) or other responsible person uploaded to the Internet the domain "BidVacationRental.com" which came with a script that he/she purchased to run the site and the script came loaded with "vacation rental" content {which is HA/VRBO content}.
Also: from my contact with GoDaddy, only the domain name is registered with GoDaddy, but GoDaddy is not hosting the website "BidVacationRental". They told me that the host company is in New Jersey {I have the IP address, etc. and the host company information, now.}
We also know: The domain name is owned by a company called, Covenant Capitol Holdings {it has a website} which claims to be a venture capital and private equity company.
What we do not know:
- is Covenant Capitol Holdings involved in hacking of data {e.g. from HA}?
- is Covenant Capitol Holdings involved in the selling of illegally obtained data to sell as a "home-biz" opportunity, e.g., "BidVacationRental.com"?
- is Covenant Capitol Holdings a front office for a scam operations, based in California?
- is, then, Covenant Capitol Holdings selling a script w/content to any others as an "online opportunity for home biz" to, for example, Jeff Anderson ....and did they sell it to others people as a "home biz opportunity"?
- is Jeff Anderson a willing scammer...or did he innocently purchase a script with content as a profitable "home business"?
- is this a willing scam operation, at all? {I don't think we can find out now, because Jeff Anderson has been "frightened" and he closed shop. We have to scan the Internet to see if such a "shop reopens" elsewhere with a different domain name. Then, we can try to catch someone in the act of using the content, e.g. our property, to steal from others}.
OR...
- is Covenant Capitol Holdings involved in a legal relationship with HA? Perhaps HA is looking into the "bidding" platform for a future vacation rental portal?
The last point is important. We need to know if HA is indeed involved in a new venture in association with Covenant Capitol Holdings. And, if they are...we will have to look into whether we must accept that they may have the rights to use the advertising content we willingly uploaded to HA-VRBO sites --- we'll have to check the "small print".
Shouldn't they need our agreement to accept and sign on to a new format of advertising of our properties...e.g. to agree to accept "low bids"? I should think so. We already pay a high premium to advertise on the HA family of websites....so why in the world would we agree to encouraged "low ball bids"?
However, I don't think this is done with the permit of HA. I suspect this was a scam operation. I'm just not certain if Jeff Anderson is innocent of any willful wrong doing.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
marym Mar 19, 2012 5:38 PM (in response to anja)I just wish one of the monitors from HA (Laura/Travis) would chime in and let us know if they know and what they know.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
sodamo Mar 19, 2012 6:49 PM (in response to marym)To me, it's always a bit unsettling at best, perhaps suspect at worst, when the hall monitors are slow to chime in to this forum. Again, JMHO, but HA/VBRO monitors seem pretty responsive when it serves them well.
As for over reaching, maybe, but I don't think I'd have a very positive reaction to receiving a "bid" proposal from an unknown.
David
Sent from my iPad (3rd Gen) Please visit vacation.ninolehawaii.com
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
anja Mar 20, 2012 2:23 PM (in response to sodamo)What does not serve -me- well...{I imagine other owners here too} is finding my place on a website which pitches the motto:
"Find the perfect vacation home rentals and save big by making low bids on condos, villas, beach houses, cabins, cottages, or any other vacation rentals by ...etc.."
That anyone...especially HA... would pool respectable property owners together in that manner without our consent to participate in a "low bidding" for our homes is low. {Their non-response is troubling.}
I'm going to be more viligent and more attentive on 'the Net'...because that "bid format" will probably re-emerge with a different domain name.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
marym Mar 20, 2012 5:35 PM (in response to anja)I also find their lack of response troubling. Several owners in this post have asked for a reply from Laura/Travis.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
trish Dec 31, 2012 1:33 PM (in response to sophie)There's also a post on the forum about Best Bid vacation rentals now.
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Re: BEWARE OF bidvacationrental.com IT'S A SCAM!!!!!! Look for your property!
trish Dec 31, 2012 1:57 PM (in response to trish)I'd never read this particular string of postings before, but in looking at it now, I see that not ONCE .......not ONCE, did HA respond to something that is of a serious concern to their "customers"......and bill-paying home owners. That says a lot to me. Guess this topic was too much of a hot potato. And I am SURE they read all these posts.
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