Owners Direct and Bank Transfer

fairy_gurl

Hi

I was wondering if anyone had any feedback on owners direct as I am thinking of renting a property advertised on there.

Also the owner of the property in question has asked for the deposit to be paid by bank transfer. Is this a safe method as I thought Credit Cards were preferrable?

Thanks in advance

sarluk

hi
sorry got no advice on bank transfer but after reading some reviews we decided to book a villa in spain last year with owners direct and it was the best villa and holiday we had in a long time. Obviously most of the villas ect are owned by different people so its impossible to say whos good and who's not, but we did read generally really good reviews about people using them and that swayed it for us. I think if i remember rightly i typed in names of our shortlist of villas into trip advisor some wern't there but there were quite a few that were and we went with the one with best reviews and we were very happy with what we got.

dzug1

Depends what you mean by safe - yes the money will get there, but you don't know where 'there' is and don't have any protection if the owner is a crook/goes bust.

With Owners Direct the former is unlikely, the latter always a possibility.

That's the difficulty with booking an individual home - someone who owns just the one place isn't going to want to have the overheads of accepting credit cards for what over the year may be less than a transaction a month.

estelle123

I was looking at owners direct ad was concerned about handing money over to a total stranger.And the rest before arrival,my problem with this is if this bloody volcano erupts again and flights are grounded we would loose all our money also arriving in span and having no apartment.I have now decided to book it a week before and pay on arrival.

eslick

see if you can find the property on vrbo.com, they have a insurance, you pay for it, in case things go wrong.

uncovered

i have used owners direct three times now. it is the norm to pay the owners by bank transfer. I havent had a problem but know there is always a risk. i always have a vision of turning up and nobody there to be honest.

as i say though, never had a problem. doing the same again this year for portugal. i think its really the only way you can do this as you are dealing with ordinary people and we really dont have credit facilities. alot is based on trust, which sometimes is hard when you don't know the people.

Sagz_2

I've used Owners Direct and it is a bit of a gamble when handing over your money. We looked for someone who had been registered on the site for a few years and then had to just trust them. We sent a deposit by cheque and got an email receipt and then paid the final amount 6 weeks before we were due to stay.

Luckily, everything went well and we had a wonderful holiday in a beautiful villa in Cyprus.

Greenlight77

We've used Owners Direct a couple of times and paid by bank transfer without any problems. The villas in both cases were superb.

I seem to remember when you reserve a villa etc that you have the option to register the booking with the site (free of charge) which then gives you some protection in the event of any problems with payments etc.

lagoslife

Been away so my opinion is a bit late.

Sending payment by cheque or bank transfer is the norm when booking a private holiday rental as very few owners offer a credit card option.

However, cheque or bank transfers offer little protection should the property not exist. Do your homework and research the property, give the owner a call.

There is some advice on booking holidays safely online here:
http://www.getsafeonline.org/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=1550
http://blog.schofields.ltd.uk/416/how-to-check-for-bogus-holiday-rentals/

Owners direct offer an insurance policy to protect against fraud, I think it's a % of the holiday cost, if you have doubts.

Compared to the amount of holidays booked scams are rare, but do your research before sending money to a stranger.

Just my input from experience.