FlipKey
Complaint 278533 Details

This past week we accessed flipkey in search of a vacation rental in Virginia Beach. We found a wonderful home, but wanted more info. On the flipkey page was a button linking to the owner of the home, we submitted our question and received standard official response from flipkey that our question was directed to the owner/manager of the property. At this point we had no reason to question the authenticity since the info was directed from flipkey to the owner. With in a very short time we received an e-mail response from someone who claimed to be the owner a Dr. Jake Rainey. We had previously also noted the property on Sandbridge reality website and it stated it was booked for the week we wanted, but Dr. Jake denied using Sandbridge and said it was open, even willing to give us a price break. The next day we received a contract and the red flags were up. Dr. Jake wanted us to wire the full price of the week to Wells Fargo Bank account. We called the Bank and they acknowledge the name on the account matched what Dr. Jake stated so we still thought maybe it was legit. We made some other phone calls and found out someone else owned the property and spoke to Sandbridge reality who confirmed they were the rental agent. We could have easily been out $6,000. had we believed in Flipkey's claim that they verify their owners. Through this we also learned that individuals usually use writeme.com as their e-mail since it is free and cannot be traced back. Be careful...we will obviously never use flipkey again.