how to book a tenerife rental

ledgersman

Hi, I am trying to book a private apartment/villa in tenerife and there are loads of good sites like holidaylettings.com. So I have found ones I like and pay by card through the website only to have the booking lapse because the owner (a lot of whom seem to be russian) wants to deal direct and by direct payment or cash. Is this the way things are?

hollydays

If you get there and find the showers not working or there's no water at all, what comeback have you got? Report them to holiday lettings.what do the t & cs say?
What price bracket are you looking at?

bagand96

I'm guessing that if they accept payment through holidaylettings then the site charge them some sort of commission etc. Whereas if they can persuade you to pay them directly they keep 100% of the money.

As hollydays said, you do lose the protection if you pay the owner direct (I've not looked in depth at what protection exactly holidaylettings provide).

Its a difficult one and depends a lot on whether you trust the owner etc. It's like seeing something on eBay but instead of buying on the auction, agreeing a deal with the seller directly. you have no comeback.

That said, I did book an apartment in Cyprus a few years ago and spoke with and payed the owner direct rather than through the site. The owner was British and living in the UK and I'd had a few telephone conversations with her and built up what I considered to be a good trust. Everything went fine.

lea2012

Personally I would always pay via the website if possible, but there are always listing's that don't take payment through the site.

I've booked a few rentals, some through the site and some with direct payment via PayPal.

Most have been as expected but one particular property in southern Spain was a let down. Furniture was ripped, bedding dirty, a bit messy on arrival but then after a week the electric went off as they'd not paid the bill and our key card to get into the communal pool wouldn't work as they'd not paid community fees! It took two days to get the electric back on and we had nowhere else to go. The owners brought us candles and said they'd refund us £100 cash with our breakages deposit. We didn't get it and when we contacted holiday lettings they couldn't care less and said it was between us and the owner, but not long after the property was taken off the site.

I would ask on the tenerife trip advisor forum to see if anyone can recommend anywhere.

ledgersman

Thanks, I found a website for one of these properties, looked legitimate but all three of the phone numbers were unavailable. IF it looks bad, smells bad etc
Back to Tompsons im afraid.

jaks111

Try owners direct i booked mine through there last year and re booking again also google tenerife forums lots of help on there.