The rental villa on the French Riviera that Sonia Guillaume found online looked picture-perfect. It featured a manicured garden, spacious living areas, a pool, and stunning views.
And there was the price: 10 percent off the weekly $2,250 rate in August, when pretty much all of France is on vacation.
Guillaume contacted the owner through the website, owned by the US vacation rental company HomeAway, and wired him the money. But she was dealing not with the owner but with someone who had fraudulently obtained the owner’s e-mail password, a crime known as phishing.
In January, I reported that HomeAway had promised to crack down on phishing and work with victims to save their vacations. But since then, more defrauded renters and homeowners have come forward.
Rental owners complain they are being blamed unfairly. Customers allege the company’s attitude is dismissive.
HomeAway, which also operates VRBO.com, says nothing could be further from the truth: It has not been contacted by any law enforcement officials, but if it were, it would fully cooperate. The company has added phishing warnings to its sites and recently posted a job notice for a director of global fraud prevention.
And it says that of the 13 phishing cases I’ve brought to its attention since November, seven have been resolved, although it declines to say how, citing its privacy policy.
Some HomeAway customers did not respond to my inquiries because they signed nondisclosure contracts as part of their settlement with the company. But Alisa Golson of San Francisco contacted me after her mother-in-law wired $7,300 to a scammer for a rental she had found through VRBO. She says the company has urged the homeowner to settle but he has refused.
“They appeared to do little or no investigation into what happened,’’ she says. “They took a very strong stance that they were not responsible.’’
So her mother-in-law hired an attorney. The company eventually agreed to cover the $7,300 she lost in the scam, Golson says.
“We are taking this seriously,’’ says Carl Shepherd, HomeAway’s cofounder. “We launched a significant education effort to travelers and our owners. We’re working with other people in the industry . . . we’re developing some product changes that we hope to announce soon.’’ Even though HomeAway has “no legal responsibility’’ for phishing, he said, “we work diligently with both the owner and the traveler’’ to find a solution.
Christine Karpinski, author of the book “How to Rent Vacation Properties by Owner,’’ says the company’s problems aren’t unique.
“Vacation rental sites need to plaster their pages with warnings to never pay by wire transfer,’’ she says.
Try BostonGlobe.com today and get two weeks FREE. Christopher Elliott is National Geographic Traveler magazine’s reader advocate.