Owners Direct

Beware of Villa Scams

Be very wary of booking villas without speaking directly to the owners. I booked a villa (villa consuela fuerteventura) through owners direct by using the enquiry form on the site, the enquiry was then sent to the villa owner whose email account had been hacked. i received an email from sunnyrentalsspain@yahoo who posed as the property company, they answered all my questions and i booked the villa and paid for it using bank transfer. a week before the holiday i had another question and when i emailed a few times at got no response i finally phoned the contact number and spoke to the real owners who knew nothing about our booking. I ended up with no villa and the best part of a thousand pounds down. seems nobody will take liability for my data being mishandled. the police are investigating but i doubt i'll ever see my money again. I didn't find Owners Direct to be at all sympathetic. I think they should remove email forms from their site and just have phone numbers for the owners. Email is not secure enough clearly!!