The strong demand for housing and renting a room on the island this tourist season is causing housing scams to surface. Guillermo and Yolanda are just two of the cases reported in recent days; after making the deposit, the alleged landlord has disappeared. Yolanda has filed a complaint with the Policía Nacional, although “they told me that there was little they could do”.
Housing Scams
Guillermo took a boat from Gran Canaria to Huelva on May 2 because he wanted to get to Ibiza with his car. From Huelva he would go to Denia and, from there, he would take another boat to the island. He had a room booked to enter on the 3rd, he had even signed a contract and paid a deposit of 500 euros to make sure that it was not a housing scam, but it was not to be.
“The boat that was taking him to Huelva suffered a breakdown and they were eight hours adrift, so he could not catch the boat to Denia and he told the supposed owner that instead of arriving on the 3rd, he would arrive on the 4th”, says his mother, Cristina Garcia. It was at that moment when everything began to fall apart. “I had already warned my son that, before paying a deposit, he should check that everything was all right because I was hearing that in Ibiza there were a lot of scams,” she says.
Guillermo, who had been in contact with the supposed landlord for several days, sent him a message to let him know that he would arrive later. He told her that there was no problem and when he asked him another question, he stopped answering.
“Mom, can you do me a favor? Can you call my landlord?”, Cristina read on the screen of her cell phone. She then asked him to send her the contract he had signed and screenshots of her conversations with him. “I see that the contract is signed by a law firm and I’m looking for an address. I sent them an email telling them what had happened and that the landlord was not responding, that I was worried because my son was going to arrive on the island and had nowhere to go,” she says.
They replied. It is a Madrid office that has nothing to do with this gentleman. “We know he has been reported”, said the email that Cristina received in response. “It would seem that several people have already contacted them regarding the housing scam,” she laments.
As there was no apparent solution, Cristina booked seven nights in a hotel so that her son would have time to look for a room, but as he started working as soon as he set foot on the island, she was the one who found him an offer. “I made it clear to him to look carefully, to check the mailbox, to even ask in the store downstairs if they were the ones they said they were [the landlord],” she recounts. Now Guillermo has managed to get a room for 600 euros. “
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.