mrsjacobs

They required us to prepay the whole rental in advance, and when we showed up the apartment was already occupied! They never refunded our money and now we are having to take them to court!

WillTravel

Could you give more details? Are you going to a London court? How does that work?

Michel_Paris

OK...your first posting at Fodors (on two threads) is slamming a company. How do I know you don't work for their competitors?

Please don't come here to post this sort of stuff (aka crap) unless you can provide a LOT more details.

Christina

More details would certainly be helpful, but I really don't know why people assume first posts that are complaints are totally fairy tales. It is not AKA crap necessarily. I think if someone has really bad consumer problems, it is natural to go online to find a site to complain about. I would probably do it myself, actually.

I find this a lot more believable than first time posts that are wonderful recommendations for a place when there have been no other posts, because I don't think it is normal or in human nature to run to the internet to find sites you've never heard of before to post that you had a great time someplace. I think most of those are ads or doo-doo.

I think the usual problems with complaints is that sometimes when the full truth comes out, the complaintant doesn't have a real case and caused problems themselves.

For example, in this case, it is possible that this was an agency that wanted to move someone to another apt. because the one they reserved could not be vacated. We have read about that a few times on here, and most contracts have some wiggle room in them about being able to substitute, if necessary. Of course, one hopes that is seldom necessary. Prepayment requirements are nothing, apt. rentals always require that, even in private life (ie, any longterm apt. rental requires you to pay rent in advance for a month, not after the month is over).

I think there may be some disreputable agencies that frequently try to move people to other apts, sort of bait and switch, and that is not acceptable. If it's really a case of paying for something and not even being offered a substitute, that is completely unacceptable.

Michel_Paris

I guess I had one too many glasses of cynicism/skepticism today

OK, apologies if I'm wrong.

janisj

if you read the OP's other post it is even shorter than this one - just says they are "lying cheats"

I wouldn't give any weight to the posts one way or the other. Sure first-post rants can be legit. But this short hit doesn'r give us <u>anything</u> to go on. Probably just someone looking for all the travel sites she can find to post this.

But I do think if it was totally legit she'd at least give some details.

janisj

oh - that being said - the agency doesn't look like one of the mainline/well-known ones. Its main links seem to be for Finland, Slough and Milton Keynes???