Fraud

Unfortunately I have been a victim of fraud. Although I followed the safe guards provided by red week by receiving a written contract, the owner is not responding to my emails, calls or texts. Do not rent any units from SABINA CASE, specially a unit from the Marriott Maui.

Redweek has not been able to help me. I no longer feel comfortable renting from this website. Every transaction requires a leap of faith and in this case the renters were fraudulent scammers.

If you paid with a credit card through Paypal, notify your Credit card company and open a dispute.

Mary -

I'm sorry to hear you believe your transaction was fraudulent. Our Fraud team is currently investigating the matter. For future reference, you may want to consider the option of using the rental escrow service in order to ensure a safe transaction.

If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to Contact Us .

Phyllis

I have been informed that Sabina's email account had been hacked. However, I do not understand how they were able to provide me with confirmation number that showed they did in fact have the unit for the week they said they did. I plan on calling the District Attorney in Maui and filing a complaint. Thank you for your response. So disappointed this happened.

I am very sorry for maryn's unfortunate experience. I have absolutely NO affiliation with RedWeek (other than my own paid membership here), but in all fairness no web site (including RedWeek) can realistically be blamed or responsible for what happens with the personal email accounts of people simply using a third party web site to advertise.

People advertising on (or responding to ads on) RedWeek are merely RedWeek customers, over whom RedWeek has absolutely no influence or control, just as on any similar site. However, in my own personal experience after some years here, RedWeek has far fewer problems with scammers than most any other timeshare related site that I am aware of. After all, anyone posting (or responding to) an ad on RedWeek must first be a paid member and very few scammers choose to create and leave behind a "paper trail" by which they can potentially be traced, identified and located (...and maybe even prosecuted) later.

One scam that seems to be reported with increasing frequency in the last year or so in the timeshare world is the creation and use of phony reservation documents, made possible after a "hack" into a timeshare owners email and / or other accounts for the information and details necessary to create the bogus document. However, these situations can generally be detected and / or averted early on by the would-be tenant simply verifying the legitimacy of any such document directly with the resort involved.

Using an escrow service such as that offered via RedWeek may be beneficial to a tenant, but all timeshare owners have to pay their maintenance fees long in advance of the usage week and many owners understandably do NOT want to have to wait until weeks AFTER a rental has been completed before receiving their rental payment. As a timeshare owner, I don't often rent out weeks, but I certainly understand (and share) that viewpoint.

Another positive tool Redweek has implemented is the 'Redweek Verified' tool, where they verify that one actually owns a timeshare at the resort they say!! I am a Timeshare Owner of multiple weeks in Aruba and when we have availability, we use Redweek and then have it RW Verified so it's legit to potential Renters - it works!!

How much did this outfit charge you for its alleged services?

we filed, they paid the scammers, Mariott, the same.

Hello Mary,

I'm so sorry you have been a victim of fraud. I have rented my timeshare with Redweek and paid for them to manage everything. They will confirm the reservation I made is accurate before I can even post it. If you want to try Redweek again email me I'll be happy to help you. Change2009111@gmail.com

Cathy

I have literally spent 30 minutes on the phone with a customer care person about an obvious scam that happened to us on redweek. I have not been helped really but what I have discovered is that the "owner" is new on redweek and a private listing , and that the arrangements would go through her. My correspondence is on your site and the person on the phone ( who apparently has no manager) said I should send her screenshots of our correspondence - IT'S ON YOUR WEBSITE! This person never told me the cost of the rental just that I should send the money by Paypal and do it soon as she has other people who want it ? RED FLAG ONE !!!! I asked for an invoice to pay - she said "What is that?" REDFLAG TWO, then she obviously used our account name and googled to find my phone number - my phone number is not listed on REDWEEK my husband's is. RED FLAG THREE. Then she calls me and says she accidentally sent over a thousand dollars to my Paypal account. RED FLAG FOUR . I do not have a Paypal account , my husband does. She says says next oh it was sent to my phone number ( WHAT - I do not have a Paypal account). Then I sent her a message through Red Week saying. " I do not have Paypal. So you could not have sent me money by Paypal - I would suggest you contact Paypal if indeed you did send money to me. I am also confused as to how you got my number as it is not listed on Redweek. I am assuming you googled my number. I would not like to deal with you anymore and will be contacting Redweek first thing tomorrow morning. Our complete correspondence has been highly suspicious." She calls again and says Oh do I still want to rent the property I can send her the money? (WHAT) So in short calling your phone line has been useless . No I didn't lose any money , but I am seriously concerned that other people on your site might get scammed by her or one of many others like her. AND to be honest I am feeling really really wary of making any future bookings through Red Week.

I am not sure that I entirely understand all of what you have described above, but one takeaway I certainly have is something that I always recommend regarding listings on RedWeek --- deal *ONLY* with listings that are "RedWeek Verified". Doing so at least ensures that the ownership identity and all of the details within the listing have already been independently confirmed. Forewarned is forearmed!

JUST another tip. I ALWAYS call the resort and confirm the confirmation number myself. AND I have it in our personal contracts that they can do the same - I even give them the phone number of the resort and they can verify it on their own. I never trust Redweek's verification service, as that is NOT the end all to being sure that you receive the unit.