I emailed about renting a room in…Brighton
I emailed about renting a room in Brighton and I received an email that seemed standard, giving me details of the property etc:
'...Thanks for the interest you have in my flat. My flat is available for
rent and you can stay in my flat as long as you pay your
rent at when due...At this stage that you want to rent my flat, i need to know some few question about you...'
Which is the exact same email I received from another 'landlord' and another 'property' from this website. Anyway I responded to this first email a few days later and the landlord immediately asked for me to 'put down a security deposit now to secure the flat? So that i can ignore other interested candidate.' This rang alarm bells in my head, but I told them I could 'sort the deposit today' to see what then happened, they said:
'Before sending over my bank account details I need to know if you are doing the transfer right this minute ? To avoid any disappointment' .. and then..
'Did you get my message ?'
It was quite creepy, I sent the following email in response:
'Hi,
Yes I did get your message.
To be safe I would rather view the property and meet you face to face before sending over money straight away.
I do want to rent the property but you can never be too careful, if we could arrange a viewing first that would be great.
Thanks,' At this point, I still thought that the landlord was a legitimate person, which now seems silly as I'm sure the whole website is fake and the names on the emails are made-up.
The response I got was this:
'it is unfortunate that my past bitter experience of inviting people to come and viewing my apartment without any form
of confirmation of their financial ability and not keeping up to time as at when scheduled, has brought about great loss to me. I have drive all the way from a distance to take some interested candidates round my flat because am a live out landlord.
Some outside tenants do not have the money to pay the rent and yet they disturb the the landlord to arrange a viewing and not keeping up to time.
Am not after your money OK and I have a very good job that takes proper care of my family. As soon as you get the deposit sorted now to my account details , there after I will issue you an invoice receipt for your peace of mind.
Note, if you don't like the flat after the viewing I will refund back your money instantly without any deduction.'
I mean, the English is terrible and the pushyness, even if legit (which it isn't) would put me off a property with such a landlord.
The way it works is if you email one of their fake landlords the site sends out an automated/template email under that specific landlords name and if you respond to that you'll get an email pushing for 'security deposit', making u feel like its a high demand property, when really the property doesn't exist. I emailed back saying I wasn't interested.
Don't use roombuddies!
25 September 2018
Unprompted review