I HAVE NOT HAD ONE SINGLE PERSON REPLYING TO ME REGARDING MY ROOM RENTALS... EASYROOMATE WAS BETTER
My husband signed up on www.easyroommates.com and purchased the Premium Membership to help us find a room to rent until we sell our home out of state. Within a day he received an email from a potential landlord with details including the home address, pictures of the home, what is included, etc. They stated the rent amount and the refundable deposit amount. They then continued communicating via text and set up a date/time for us to go look at the home and room.
Next we got an email from *******@easyroommates.com; *******@usa.com with the subject line: "Action required! Confirm your viewing request on Easyroommate" which in the body of the email stated reservation requirements include a $500 deposit to take the listing off the website and it would be refundable, but had to be Bitcoin as the website is located in the UK. Victoria is listed as a customer service contact on the website. The person who initially emailed us is using someone else's name who is a property manager in San Jose (we are in Texas). I have notified her and found out someone else has reported the scam to her as well, so she can pursue as she chooses. I also was able to locate the REAL home owner by searching the county property tax database for the home address the scammer sent, and then googling his name and actually found his land line phone number. I left a message and he called me back and confirmed his home is not for rent and never has been. Bitcoin is untraceable; if we had paid our money would have been gone forever. I believe easyroommates.com at minimum is selling customer information (as there was no initial message to or from this person on the website and no Listing ID was in any communication) -- but I now believe the website is a complete scam or their website is seriously compromised.
Luckily something felt off and we were able to find all this information online and put the pieces together before we were scammed. But it's a slick scam preying on people in a specific situation, using real property addresses and people's names.
The FAQ's on the easyrooommate.com site actually list all of this, but I only found it by googling and couldn't access it on the site when logged in as a Premium Member.
The third link below is pretty much the identical format to what we received, just different details.
https://easyroommate-uk.helpscoutdocs.com/article/1151-online-scams-trends-and-techniques-updated
http://easyroommate-uk.helpscoutdocs.com/article/1146-report-a-scammer
https://s3.amazonaws.com/helpscout.net/docs/assets/5655d3c8c*******b26a5a72e/images/59a08b*******033a1c4d06/Bitcoin-scam.jpg
I also notified *******@easyroommate.com via email (who the website lists if you think there is a scam) but don't expect much of a response, if any.
See attached screenshot. I blacked out my husband's email address, the property address and the name of the landlord as they are legitimate people not associated with this.
DON'T USE THIS SITE
I'm sorry to hear about your unfortunate experience on your first day using the site.
Unfortunately, in rare cases, scammers use our name and logo to contact and prey on Members of the site. We would like to confirm that other than the contact options available on the site, Messages and phone numbers (if provided by the users), we will never share or sell any contact details on the site or tolerate spam. Also, for privacy matters we do not allow access to the email addresses of any members on the site.
What these scammers manage to do, is create fake accounts on the site to gain access to the phone numbers of the users and contact them directly from there. Your account on the site has the phone number available (you have not checked the mark to hide the number) which explains why they have contacted you directly via text messages.
We are not an agency, we are a classified site and we will never text or email any of our users to book a viewing, organize a key delivery or collect a rent and deposit payment.
The only people representing our firm are our customer support team, and they can only contact or be contacted by using the contact options available on this page: https://easyroommate-us.helpscoutdocs.com/article/283-the-customer-service-team
Any other email addresses are just fake and belong to fraudsters who claim to be part of Easyroommate. To bring awareness to our users and help them stay safe, we have mentioned about this type of scams on our website FAQs, which can be easily accessed by clicking on "Help & advice". We also send safety tips via email to all of our users where we clearly advice them not to wire money and not to make any financial agreements with anyone they have not met in person.
You can stay in touch with us at [email protected] as we have every desire to address your concerns and provide every solution available.
They like to scam you. Will contact a lawyer.
Thank you for your feedback, Frank.
We are sorry to hear that no one has replied to your messages.
First, I would like to clarify that we have only changed our name from EasyRoommate to Roomgo. Our services, management, and integrity all remain exactly the same.
Frank, we totally understand how frustrating it must be to not receive any replies from other users. Unfortunately, sometimes it can take some time to get replies because some members do not log in on a daily basis or do not respond to messages they are not interested in.
However, be assured that we try everything to contact these members and inform them of the receipt of your message. Indeed, we send them multiple emails requesting them to reply to you. Moreover, we deactivate their accounts if they have been inactive for longer than 14 days.
Further, please note that the rental market has taken a hit since the start of the Coronavirus pandemic. Potential tenants and especially international students are now very hesitant to move out. As a result, rental demands have witnessed a remarkable drop in recent months.
Please feel free to contact us on [email protected] and we would be more than happy to help you and provide you with some useful tips that will help improve your experience on the website.
We are looking forward to hearing from you.
The Roomgo CS Team.