vacation rentals: A friend of ours is going to spend a few days in NYC in September and we are trying to help her find some decent accommodations for a reasonable price. The offers in craiglist seem good - some seem to good to be true but, there is the deposit issue - supposedly to reserve the place. We wonder if this is a secure procedure, if it could be scam? We have no way of checking it in person. I appreciate your help on this. Thanks.|||There are many, many scams on craigslist! Things to avoid: Apartments under $100/night - You'll find loads of beautifully furnished apartments advertised for $60, $65, $70 per night (or 2 or 3 bedrooms for $100-$125/night) with amazing photographs, sun drenched rooms and decor. These are NOT actual NYC apartments, they are pictures taken from other cities, real estate sites, magazines, etc. . Most scammers will ask you to wire a deposit via Western Union. DON'T DO IT! They price the nightly rates low to attract you, but their real goal is to get you to send a deposit, which you'll never see again. And contrary to popular belief, you are also not 100% safe using Paypal, as the scammers have begun using that as well. If you do use paypal, use a credit card so you can do a chargeback if there's a problem. Another obvious way to expose a scammer is that they list several apartments at the same time (in a row) with similarities such as using a yahoo email account (also ymail, gmail) or broken english in the ad or in their response (most scammers are overseas). Look for traits such as writing an email address twice like this: joe_scammer@yahoo.com joe_scammer@yahoo.com (They use the same pattern but with different email names) Another way to expose a scammer is to flag the ad as "spam" and hit refresh in your browser. Many scam ads will get removed after a single flag, because they post in other cities as well and get flagged all the time. Many scammers will post especially late at night/early in the morning when there is less of a chance that they'll be flagged since less people visit, but they do also post all day long. Last and most important.... do a google search for the email, name or address of the person or website. There are many websites & blogs dedicated to getting ripped off. There are even some websites that advertise on craigslist that have scammed or left people homeless when they arrived. There are of course, legit ads on craigslist but it's up to you to do your homework! For example, Hotel-Alternatives.com is a reputable site that advertises on craigslist: http://www.hotel-alternatives.com Good luck!|||If the offer is too good to seem true than it's a scam. Check out the link to see what craigslist has to say about scams.|||Personally, I would never use Craigslist. I know too many people that have had bad experiences with it.|||Nope...|||There had been some good advice posted. I would add that you should verify the existence of the property and ownership to the best of your ability. Nothing is 100%. There are a lot of good, legitimate vacation rentals posted on Craigslist, but unfortunately the lack of any kind of verification makes it easy for a scammer to steal an ad off of a reputable site and place on CL. I've baited a few of these scammers and found a couple of consistencies. 1. Like mentioned above they want a wire transfer or a money order. 2. Their rental agreements have horrendous spelling, punctuation and grammar mistakes 3. They are not very detailed in their email responses. The dates are always available even though you do not give them specific arrival and departure days. Yet, they will not respond to detailed questions about the property, location or neighborhood. 4. The rates are often lower than market rate. They want a sizable deposit up front. 5. They don't know what they are advertising. They may call it an apartment when it's a house or condo. 6. They are probably using a gmail or yahoo email. Yahoo is great because you can track down the IP when they mail you. (Surprise it's Nigeria). 7. The address in the ad is bogus or the address of a public building. Keep in mind that vacation rental owners are targets of scams, also. Owners have to be equally suspicious of Craigslist inquiries. We have a vacation rental and I use CL to market. However, I only use it to drive traffic to our personal website for the rental. My recommendation is to get to know who you are doing business with. Can they answer questions about the property, location or other? Are they listed in any local business directories? Is the rental agreement written in clear, plain English (or appropriate native language)? Is the contact phone number and address appropriate? Most important: If the deal is too good to be true, it probably is not very good.