I have a booking request, through VRBO, for a 2 week stay in late February. His company is paying for the stay and wants to pay either by company check or cashiers check. VRBO says they will only accept an online credit card payment. We’re pretty certain that direct booking would be violating their rules, and may lead to us being kicked off the platform. We don’t want to lose this business, either. Has anyone else had experience with this, or know how to solve this issue?
"company check’ or ‘cashiers check’ is easily translated into
scam.
Can you imagine any company in the world asking to pay a hotel by cashier’s check? Nope. Next step will be a check arriving for more than you asked for, with the sender asking for the difference sent back. Then, in 2-3 weeks the check will bounce / be found fake and you will have been scammed.
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Oh goodness. I’m glad you posted here first. Rolf is right, this in an old and well known scam. As a new host you are particularly vulnerable to this.
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Oh my gosh thank you so much. Just skimmed thru the link u sent (I’ll read it at length when i get home) but it sounds like this is a textbook example…
Funny- my hackles went up right away, bc he seemed interested in going off platform, but the cashier’s check was what made me think it might be innocent.
I’ve read often that vrbo has these issues much more often- we’ve done 95% of our bookings thru Airbnb - is it true that it’s more a VRBO problem or have we just been lucky…?
The brief time I was on VRBO I had something similar and figured it was a no go. Someone else wanting to pay the renter’s fee with a check. Head for the hills.
Vrbo isn’t as controlling as AirBnB, so you’ll get more scammers on Vrbo than AirBnB. But you’ve already been hit with the most common one, so you can recognize it.
Another piece of advice for listing on Vrbo - have a contract the guest has to sign. There’s a place to upload it and the guest has to click to accept. But it’s best if you send them a separate contract to sign and have them initial a few important clauses (lots of programs out there like DocuSign).
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Oh Hell to the no on this reservation. It’s a scam. Run, run, run away and report the “guest” to VRBO.
ALL COMPANIES have company credit cards. I’ve done plenty of bookings with folks who had companies book for them or they get reimbursed.
Nope, nope, nopeity nope.
This "guest’ doesn’t work for any company. They are sitting in their mom’s basement running scams.
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