Many rental sites through agencies operate the same way in terms of reviews. All reviews are sent to the rental agent who then posts them on their website. I have never had a bad rental so don’t know if bad reviews are not posted but I would think they would be conveiniently lost. The moral of the story is a website is not merely enough information to rent a house. You need to talk (on the phone) to the owner or rental agent, ask lots of questions. I have asked for additional pictures an the owner has gone out and shot them and emailed them to me. There are also many independent sites like Trip Advisor where you can find people who have rented the house or locals who know the house. Lots of information to be found.
My agent simply responded with inaccuracies, in order to deflect an honest review.
UPDATE: The agent just opted his listing out of VRBO traveler reviews, for fear of honest user reviews of his questionable business practices and customer non-service.
Citicard investigated this matter very carefully, ostensibly concluding that this agent had overcharged my account in an un-authorized manner, and had failed to justify via standard business billing. It has reimbursed me for several hundred dollars, altogether. I have written a follow-up note to VRBO.com, which earlier confirmed to me that the rental agency are under close monitoring. Moreover, I warned one apartment landlord about my torturous experience, with corroborating documentation from Citicard and VRBO, so that she is aware of this agent representing her wonderful apartment to innocent travelers.
Please note that at least another renter also had a difficult experience with Jose Arturo Ibarra,
regarding unexplained credit-card charges. Independent, unsolicited corroboration is helpful
to show a pattern of business practice. Be safe and well. Thank you.
6. Re: rent paris now apartment agency
SSY1854
San Francisco
posts: 1
Sep 14, 2011, 7:36 PM
I used “Rent Paris Now” about an year ago in 2010, and I strongly advise everyone not to use this agency: I knew that something was wrong with this agency, because they would, for example, ask you to e-mail them your VISA information when you make a reservation, which you understand is not very professional. Then after about an year, yesterday, I was shocked to find an unauthorized charge of $678.92 by “Rent Paris Now,” even though I have not done any business with them since last year. When I contacted Jose Ibarra at “Rent Paris Now” by e-mail, he quickly wrote me back and assured me that he did not make such a charge; however, he also flatly refused to cancel the charge, saying (all in broken English) that he was not responsible, even though I sent him the screen shot of my bank account that shows the $678.92-charge by his agency. So now I have to reverse this unauthorized charge by calling the security of the credit card company, even though I’m now in Paris right now. In any event, I honestly believe that an agency like this should not be operating, especially since there are many honest agencies in Paris that can offer you better apartments at lower costs.
Wow, just found this thread. I’ve rented through VRBO lots of time (domestically only) and had good experiences. Now, I wonder if I was just lucky. The fact that they can censor reviews is very disturbing. Thanks for posting your experience, Victor, and I’m glad it worked out in the end. Oh well, I guess only hotels for my family from now on.
Victor Hong, NYBondGeek, WineHunter and pseudonyms continues to falsely claim on a number of different websites that we overcharged his credit card. We did not. In fact, over a year ago Victor Hong, NYBondGeek, WineHunter and pseudonyms’s claims were investigated, resolved and rejected by his credit card company.
Since 2005 Rent Paris Now has rented boutique-style classic and luxury apartments throughout the most desirable areas of Paris.
As noted through many independent testimonials on TrpAdvisor/FlipKey, VRBO and HomeAway our customers – many of them repeat customers – continue to praise Rent Paris Now for our selection of apartments, as well as for our customer service. In fact, this year we (Rent Paris Now Team) received an excellent rating by TripAdvisor/Flipkey, and we were also awarded Winner 2011 for customer satisfaction by TripAdvisor/Flipkey.
Rent Paris Now continues to prosper and expand, and we have proudly added more than 23 properties to our collection.
With any business, there will always be some disappointed customers; however, in our six years of renting short-term vacation rentals, Rent Paris Now has had only five disputes with our guests. In those few cases, we have always acted in a timely manner – forwarding all necessary documents immediately when called upon to do so – and have worked quickly to resolve any disagreements with the best conclusion for all parties possible.
Regarding SSY1854 post that Victor Hong, NYBondGeek, WineHunter and pseudonyms refers to, again SSY1854’s claims were investigated and have been found without justification. In fact, the error was a mistake made by his bank. SSY1854 is aware of these FACTS and as such we have requested that he remove his unjustified and inaccurate post.
Citi Cards, Box 6013, Sioux Falls, SD 57117-6013
August 27, 2010
CITICARD CLIENT, ACCOUNT NUMBER *********23 22 **ST **TH STREET
NEW YORK, NY 101
Dear *********:
Thank you for contacting Citi(R) Cards. This letter is in response to your inquiry about the transaction described below made with account number **********23:
Date Amount Description
02/22/2010 $370.35 RUE VIEILLE DU TEMPLE 04158240925 CA
We are issuing a permanent credit for this charge. Thank you for contacting us.
Sincerely,
S. Larson
Customer Service
/FRFRM02/L1/SD/ER/2625/pcn0131/D-51767*****10//
We at Rent Paris Now want to thank Mr. Victor Hong for submitting his false allegations a year ago. It taught us that we needed to take social media seriously and we are amazingly proud of what we have accomplished during that year. We are also very proud of our growth despite people that make it their life to make false claims and allegations without merit. Again thank you for welcoming us and we hope we can positively contribute to these forum.
Many of us have known Victor for years and years so for you to come here and try and salvage your website /business is going to be an uphill climb for you. So far, your not doing a very good job…
Thank you Mel Hill, I can only provide you with the FACTS that took place a year ago and the supporting documents of a satisfactory solution on our behalf. Hope you will take the time to read them and they can also be viewed by anyone that links to this link - http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/3203197/victorhongresolution-pdf-october-17-2011-11-14-am-9-0-meg?da=y - There are always two sides to every story and as you can see here, we have never posted anything until our last couple of posts because we wanted to take the high road. You might want to check what others are saying in the many sites where Mr. Victor Hong has gone public with his false claims. Since you have known him for years and you have a great deal of trust in him ask him to reply to you - please not us - there is no need to - about what took place - ask him if any of our FACTS on our document can be stated as false.
Jose, all I ask is that you please be careful in your defense (which I do not deny you) - we have a “no personal attacks” policy here. please keep the comments to facts and out of deference to Mr. Hong and other members here, please keep private things private (just a warning, not saying it’s happened)
I will make sure to never do business with VRBO, and will pass the word on to others as well. Additionally, I will warn others of this Jose Ibarra guy, and the potential attendant dangers of doing business with him.
VRBO is not this issue. I have booked rentals through vrbo and had mostly good results. Only 1 problem. resolved by my CC company. None of these sites are perfect
I’ve used VRBO once 2 yrs ago and it was a dream house on the Russian River. We enjoyed it so much that I left a $100 gift certificate to the CIA resto for the home’s owners.
From reading the response to the chargeback, it looked like a very confusing set of ever-changing transactions. I have a hard time saying that either party was fully right or wrong.
![[popcorn.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/1/1ca9f29573458cca2424a66a50d6c1261081dd3e.gif "[popcorn.gif]"){kind=small}