Paying via PayPal for Holiday accommodation?

Teagwee

My sister-in-law was trying to book a family holiday online – self-catering accommodation via an Irish website. There are no details of the house’s owners online and, while the site claims to have secure payments, there is no https nor a padlock in the address bar. She was told that this system was in use by many hotels and no one else had complained :eek:



She was then offered the opportunity to pay by PayPal but I suspect that she would have no come-back from them if everything went belly up. The situation was compounded by the reluctance of the owners to give their full names and location, which has finally resulted in an abusive email accusing her of time-wasting and being more trouble than she’s worth.



Does anyone else have any experience of PayPal and holiday bookings? I fear that people are under the illusion that these are secure and that the same dispute resolution process exists as for the supply of goods.

dudara

Moved to the Online Buying & Auctions forum, where they have a lot of Paypal experience

dudara

mad turnip

Sounds like a complete scam to be honest, but after running a business I've always found consumers are always right and can usually just claim back with any excuse and tend to get their money back no matter how hard you try to resolve the issue as a business.

tricky D

PayPal is fine for holiday home booking. Have a few clients who use this method for getting their holiday home payments.

Lack of name and addresses for owners is a red flag.

Lack of https is also a red flag and as for the excuse of many hotels not using it, while there are plenty of examples of it not being used with no complaints, it is simply unacceptable.

Teagwee

Thanks for the replies. I'm concerned because as far as I can gather from PayPal's own information, they cover only hard goods and not things like rentals - this link seems to back this up. It seems to be recommending paying via credit card as a better alternative. Perhaps this has changed in recent times?

mad turnip

Teagwee wrote: »

Thanks for the replies. I'm concerned because as far as I can gather from PayPal's own information, they cover only hard goods and not things like rentals - this link seems to back this up. It seems to be recommending paying via credit card as a better alternative. Perhaps this has changed in recent times?

You should pay with card, paypal are afraid of credit card companies as they always refund your money.

Teagwee

mad turnip wrote: »

You should pay with card, paypal are afraid of credit card companies as they always refund your money.

Since the payment page is unencrypted, she's decided that's not an option either. Don't think it's worth the chance and the abusive email put the tin hat on it. They claim they've taken hundreds of bookings with no problem over the last 3 years and have lots of 'happy' customer reports on their .com site .... :rolleyes:

mad turnip

Teagwee wrote: »

Since the payment page is unencrypted, she's decided that's not an option either. Don't think it's worth the chance and the abusive email put the tin hat on it. They claim they've taken hundreds of bookings with no problem over the last 3 years and have lots of 'happy' customer reports on their .com site .... :rolleyes:

Can you PM me the domain please?

homer911

There has been quite a number of cases of people booking holiday accommodation on line and when they turn up, there is no record of their booking with the owners of the property.

Having booked apartments/villas myself for a number of years, I would only book accommodation listed on a reputable site. Often the owner will have their own site as well, but on its own, I would be very nervous..

mad turnip

Well the site I can confirm does use https when ordering, its just iframed into the page (this means it will not appear in the url at the top)

Teagwee

mad turnip wrote: »

Well the site I can confirm does use https when ordering, its just iframed into the page (this means it will not appear in the url at the top)

Thanks for the info and if this was the only problem with this trader, I'd be a bit reassured, although everyone else seems to be advising that it should be in the browser bar. I think I'm glad she decided not to go ahead - you just can't be too careful these days.