House trip- My nightmare in London
 

Stay away from this website , pictures are very misleading do not show the neighborhood . Our apartment looked great in the pictures, in reality it was in a Grafffitied rundown street , on top of shack ..literally tinned roof shack .. In London I have pictures to prove it . House smelled of leaking gas , house trip was of no help when we contacted we lost 1000£ and they ruined our vacation .

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There's a self-catering website called housetrip dot com.

The poster presumably was a customer.

Mind you: if he was as inept in defining his needs as he's been in describing his moans (who on earth gives a flying fart about living in a "graffitied street" in a real city? Did he really not look on Streetview first, and does he actually know the difference between "run down" and the patina of age?), the problem might not be quite as self explanatory as he affects.

"Caveat emptor" can't work with buyers too feckless to make the most rudimentary prior checks.

Sorry you were disappointed but it appears that you didn't do any research in advance. Who would rent an apartment anywhere without checking google street view? And any info you can find on the specific neighborhood?

Is is possible that you rented a very inexpensive property and didn't realize that it was in a marginal/gritty neighborhood? (You don;t tell us where the property is or list it's number or the number of BRs and rate - so how are we to judge if your expectations were realistic?)

(If you rent a property at the very lowest rate it's not likely that you will be in a solid middle class neighborhood with all of the properties well kept.)

Well, so what did you do? Normally, people who get scammed have actual recourse.

Sounds like you didn't do much due diligence at all.

Ok a new poster with a complaint. I am still going to give the OP the benefit of the doubt as come on. Google street view doesn't always work. I just tried it for a place I am going to next week to see if they have parking. The person icon can't be dragged to show the street in more detail. This doesn't mean the OP couldn't have have done more to validate the place and really people can easily be taken too. I stay in hotels after a bad experience so it's a shame their vacation was ruined but hopefully a lesson well learned.

A tin roof shack . . . in London -- does seem a bit of hyperbole

But we'll likely never know what really happened because the OP probably isn't coming back.

. . . and Housetrip is a pretty long standing/well known listing site (similar to vrbo, homeaway, and airbnb)

I must admit that the tin roof shack seemed incredible for London - but I assumed it was actually a garden shed or something.

In looking at apartments in London and elsewhere, I have seen rooms that appear to have been added on with a roof different from the rest of the property. I figure they were meant as summer rooms or similar, and now have been fitted out as studio apartments.
But the ones I have seen have all looked quite suitable for short term stays.
Of course, lots of people expect a five star establishment for a one star price.

Domingo, welcome to London!

I remember when I stayed with a friend in her flat in Hammersmith. There we learned why the English call it "flat" and not "apartment" (what would be more logically). Because is was not apart.

What she had rented was nothing more than two levels of a terraced house. Her flat did not even have a door. We actually walked through the landlord's living room upstairs into her kitchen which also was her bathroom, because the cubicle where the shower was was too small for a sink.

Several times, we met the landlord in his pyjamas, when we came home late. We also found it odd to wash ourselves in a kitchen without a door.

I am sure you can tell similar stories about flats in Paris.

Greetings.

I am not entirely certain to what website you refer, but I fear this is another case where the customer (you) assumed that the website guaranteed the quality of the information they assisted in posting on the Internet.

Merely because many people have arranged successful rentals with similar websites, does not mean that the success was down to how well the operators of the website in question did what I consider to be THEIR due diligence, before they took the fee to advertise the property. In other words, the success of other renters might be due a lot more to luck, than to either the 'due diligence' of those renters or good management on the part of the website in question, than either of those parties is willing to admit.

So there is a degree of risk that one assumes in renting off of such websites. I personally consider the business model of such websites to be outrageous - they charge a fee for dispensing information and in some cases for acting as broker, and yet there seems to be no legislation in place to ensure that they be held accountable for the quality of the information they dispense. For example, there have been cases where people showed up and had no place to stay at all in exchange for their deposits - this to me is a true nightmare. (Taking down the information after a complaint is received is necessary but not to my mind a sufficient standard of accountability.) Meanwhile, you got less than what you hoped, but at least you had a roof over your head, howsoever unsatisfactory.

Until better legislation is in place, the buyer must truly beware. Google street view is not yet universal, as someone has pointed out. However, it can help to understand that in general, in markets as expensive as London - one of the most pricey pieces of real estate in the world - one's money doesn't go very far. A sum that would rent a palace in other places, won't go very far in London.

Better luck next time.

there is legislation to cover these issues, it is just that owners of the properties have decided to side step that legislation. So no fire exits, no safety inspections by trained inspectors etc etc, and I guess no business rates. By chosing this route you side step the safety that comes with it. I guess a little google would have shown the OP that.

Within the UK the role of "estate agent" has never been legislated and unlike the USA I doubt if we feel the need to introduce such anti-capitalist measures. Note we also have nothing stopping people from running a hairdresser.