Another attempt to scam us...

[mooseberry]

Here is a "Potential Guests" inquiries......
After the first email I smelled something fishy....but I played the game...here it is:
Hello,

I would like to know if you still have a room or an apartment available for rent. I reside in Dubai, United Arab Emirate but will be moving down to the United States later in June as i intend to stay at your place for at least 10 nights while i make arrangement for a permanent accommodation. My name is Amir Lateef and i am 28years old. Kindly furnish me with more details as regards the available accommodation. Basically i work on Arts and fabrics but recently i discover that there are more demands for my Arts and Fabrics in the states, so have made up my mind to relocate down. I will be coming all alone has have gotten no partner nor pet. Kindly get back to me as soon as possible if an accommodation is vacant. My likes includes, site seeing and reading. Am a calm and responsible person that likes to stay with responsible people. I don't smoke but drinks occasionally and also am drug free.

Thank you,

Amir
Hello Maggie,
Thank you for your swift response. I wish to be considered from 14th till 28th June 2008. Kindly confirm if you have availability for these period and also get back with your total rate for the duration of my stay.
Waiting to read further from you,


Amir
I will be booked on the 17th, maybe the 16th and 18th also.
Maggie


Hello Maggie,

Kindly advice on the available dates.

Amir
Can i be considered from the 19th till the 30th of June?

Amir
we can do that, but have to switch rooms after the first night.
The rate would be $139.00 per night, a total of $1529.00

Maggie
Hello Maggie,

Your charges on the room is fair enough as i have no problem changing rooms. I need you to provide me
more information as regards the nearest airport to you. Do i need a personal car to move around?

Thank you,

Amir
Dear Amir,

As of your last email, yes, you should have a car. Also, I do not know if you researched ok, where we are located at, but Tok is a sall town of about 1500 people and the nearest airport is in Fairbanks which is 210 miles north of Tok or Achorage, which lies 310 miles south from us. If you still decide to come and stay with us, we will be happy to have you. If not, we understand.

Maggie
Hello Maggie,

I have no problem staying at your place. Kindly get back with the following information so that payment can be issued to you via a United States issued check.

The information should include:

Your Full Name:
Address:
Phone Number:

Waiting to read more from you.

Amir
I wrote back that we only accept valid credit cards.....that ended this conversation.....
We all have to be on guard at all times not to be taken in...






Thank you for your inqury.
I would need to have specific dates in order to be able to give you more details since some of our room already have bookings in this time period. Our rooms start at $129.00 per night, including a full breakfast.
We also would need a valid credit card to secure you a room.

 

[JunieBJones (JBJ)]

If you have online reservations, which you do, don't ever respond to these. Everything is on your website.
red flags- tell you his age, where he is from, all of that is always rubbish. "GET BACK TO ME" is always a scam, always. Book online, check availability online, all details about your place are online. Now you are in the bullseyes from responding. You will prob have your email addie used for some heavy spam as well.

 

[EmptyNest]

Don't play the game...you will never win! And you will be losing because you responded. And..now they have your email and they know who you are!!! Expect a slew of these now:-(
DELETE DELETE, DELETE!

 

[mooseberry]

I added his whole domain to my spam and blocked sender list. So far I have not gotten any more.
They really try anything to get your money...
I Had an aunt, she fell for seems over and over again....never listened to us....

 

[Cathy]

Hi All from Sunny Mexico,
The newbie aboard. We too are going through an email very very close to this one. We have been open since February 5th of this year, but had been using our person email as our first reservations were with friends of friends of friends as our website was not up and running.
The first email was vague, but being new and WANTING (oh so badly wanting this to be true and it was to my personal email) ... only certain people used that. I digress. This person is asking us to take a large amount from his credit card and from that take our portion and the rest send via Western Union (hard to find here) send the rest of the money.
Long story shortened ...

... we knew deep down it was not correct, but it came to the personal email, which not many people knew we were running a B&B.
I found your site yesterday, or was it the day before, and have been enjoying reading and getting some great information. I do enjoy the humour though.
Looking forward to getting to know you all. Kind regard, Cathy

P.S. any helpful suggestions are always greatly taken and digested.

 

[YellowSocks]

Hi All from Sunny Mexico,
The newbie aboard. We too are going through an email very very close to this one. We have been open since February 5th of this year, but had been using our person email as our first reservations were with friends of friends of friends as our website was not up and running.
The first email was vague, but being new and WANTING (oh so badly wanting this to be true and it was to my personal email) ... only certain people used that. I digress. This person is asking us to take a large amount from his credit card and from that take our portion and the rest send via Western Union (hard to find here) send the rest of the money.
Long story shortened ...

... we knew deep down it was not correct, but it came to the personal email, which not many people knew we were running a B&B.
I found your site yesterday, or was it the day before, and have been enjoying reading and getting some great information. I do enjoy the humour though.
Looking forward to getting to know you all. Kind regard, Cathy

P.S. any helpful suggestions are always greatly taken and digested..

Yes... too good to be true.
=)
Kk.

 

[swirt]

Hi All from Sunny Mexico,
The newbie aboard. We too are going through an email very very close to this one. We have been open since February 5th of this year, but had been using our person email as our first reservations were with friends of friends of friends as our website was not up and running.
The first email was vague, but being new and WANTING (oh so badly wanting this to be true and it was to my personal email) ... only certain people used that. I digress. This person is asking us to take a large amount from his credit card and from that take our portion and the rest send via Western Union (hard to find here) send the rest of the money.
Long story shortened ...

... we knew deep down it was not correct, but it came to the personal email, which not many people knew we were running a B&B.
I found your site yesterday, or was it the day before, and have been enjoying reading and getting some great information. I do enjoy the humour though.
Looking forward to getting to know you all. Kind regard, Cathy

P.S. any helpful suggestions are always greatly taken and digested..

Hi Cathy and welcome to INNspiring.com.
Any of the "we'll gladly pay you extra" themes are always a scam. Glad you didn't fall victim to it.

 

[JunieBJones (JBJ)]

Welcome Cathy!
If you would like to share your location in Mexico and any other details feel free.
For us it is easier to weed through those goofy scam emails as we typically don't have 2 or 3 or 4 week stays, but you might. All I can say is one big word - address! LOOK AT THE "TO" address, chances are it is invisible or not you in the email address. I know you said personal email - well I have 4 email accounts that come into my INBOX collectively, but that one also arrived there also, but the TO address was hidden.
Rule #1: If it seems to good to be true, IT ALWAYS IS.
Rule #2: The sooner we have our checks and balances in place, ie website with online reservations, credit card machines or paypal (something secure) then those losers won't attempt to get into those systems. They will play on greed and of course hospitality (for our businesses).
How many of us have Saudi's stay with us? I mean, really? How many times do you have a REAL reservation for 3 people, or 3 couples for 3 weeks? RARELY ever if ever at all.
Glad you found the board. Chirp in any time. The more the merrier.

 

[gillumhouse]

You probably will not hear from him again BUT you will get a litany of very similar e-mails from "reservation services", "religious conference in your area", etc plus the "Help me move millions of dollars from my late father/husband/etc estate from Libya, Nigeria, South Africa....."
I was going to trap them with receiving a check to take to the police or FBI. that never happened but I now spend 5 to 10 minutes each morning deleting the crap off the server before I bring my e-mail into my system.
Lesson to all Newbies and Wannabees - NEVER respond HIT DELETE

 

[JunieBJones (JBJ)]

Oops I just saw your URL on your post. Beautiful place. We have another innkeeper here from up near Vancouver Island BC. I just had guests from Buckinghamshire a couple weeks ago.
I know your website is under construction, but can you tell us where this is exactly, Yucaton Peninsula, Cabo ? You must be near the water. All the best.

 

[Cathy]

Oops I just saw your URL on your post. Beautiful place. We have another innkeeper here from up near Vancouver Island BC. I just had guests from Buckinghamshire a couple weeks ago.
I know your website is under construction, but can you tell us where this is exactly, Yucaton Peninsula, Cabo ? You must be near the water. All the best..

Casa Chocolate is located in sunny Cuernavaca (aka City of Eternal Spring), 2 hours south of Mexico City. So, more central Mexico. Only 3 hours to Acapulco, so no beach, just a pool.
We love our little house and offer 4 rooms, named after our love of chocolate of course. We have the Milk Chocolate Suite (king bed, large 5 piece bathroom and private terrace), the White and Mint Chocolate rooms (queen bed, ea with 3 piece bathroom), and the Caramel House (queen bed, 3 piece bath, and kitchenette). We have been keeping relatively busy with only a week or two between weekends. Some of our guests have posted wonderful reviews on Trip Advisor. We feel very lucky to have been as busy as we have been for just opening in February.
We have a friend doing our website, but she has been very busy with her personal life/work/etc that she has not had much time to dedicate to finishing our website. Right now the temporaty/current website has photos and information that she copied from a 3 fold flier that we made ... so, the wording on the mint and white chocolate rooms are a tad odd. Will have to get her to fix it.
Although reading the 10 mistakes a B&B website makes, we are wondering if the flash website is the way to go. We will have to talk to our friend, maybe send her the link to that website. Add to her work load.
What else can I tell you about us except for our love of Chocolate (hence the name)? Our fridge has a drawer dedicated and usually filled with chocolate, yes, we do have a problem, but are not working on it. We have 2 small dogs, our 1st dog is a Chihuahua and her name is ... Chocolate.
We love our house, our business and look forward to many years of working in our semi-retired lives. lol

 

[Willowpondgj]

We had one claiming to be a minister from England, Church address was legit, even gave a live cell phone number which we called, Had an Anglo name and an Arab accent, unfortunately it was a bad connection, cough,, cough but he couldn't cough up the legit info, that was the last we heard!

 

[JunieBJones (JBJ)]

You know right away if it is REAL or not real. We have plenty of overseas guests (esp with the EURO being high) they can book online and call if THEY want to. Emailing and asking YOU to call is rubbish. I have booked overseas plenty of times and never asked an innkeeper to CALL ME!

 

[mooseberry]

I have online booking, but yet, people still email me, from my site, and ask for dates and rates and what not.....gee you are on my website, you think I tell you something different in an email?

 

[Morticia]

I have online booking, but yet, people still email me, from my site, and ask for dates and rates and what not.....gee you are on my website, you think I tell you something different in an email?.

What I've found with the guests who are looking at the calendar when they call is that they've been burned in the past by innkeepers who don't keep the calendar up to date. They want you to CONFIRM that room is REALLY available, then they will book. They don't want to wait overnight for a 'sorry, that room is not available' email and then try all over again to book.
Then again, there are those who can't figure out how to read the calendar because all the online calendars are different. They figure one out and then they're stuck trying to figure out 3 more everytime they look at a different inn. My calendar is not like this, but I have seen calendars that list the prices to the side, not on the individual dates and the prices are a range: $150-$200, so of course the guest is going to call. They want the $150 and don't want to be surprised by the $200!