London Travel Forum

hi
We had booked a Self Catering Apartment in London with www.Londonapartmentsdirect.com. We even paid an advance of GBP 100 and were told to pay the balance on arrival when we collect the keys. We had informed them of our arrival date in advance. When we reached London, we tried to get in touch with them but no one picked their telephone and we left a message on the answering machine. We tried to call them several times but with the saem result. The address provided by them also appears to be a fake as we spent a few hours trying to locate it but were unable to do so. We ultimately gave up and took another apartment which was quite a distance away. We were on the streets for more than 5 hours with all of us lugging our baggage. What is the remedy? Where do I file a complaint?

Ramesh

Try asking at a police station as to where to get advice.

Though this situation sounds like a civil matter they may be able to help and point you in the direction of someone who can help.

What a horrible experience. Since they give an address in London and presumably your payment was to London (although the website might not be based in the UK at all), write to: Office of Fair Trading, Fleetbank House, 2-6 Salisbury Square, LONDON, EC4Y 8JX Phone : 020 7211 8000, Fax : 020 7211 8800, E-mail : enquiries@oft.gov.uk.
Copy your letter, or write separately, to the police (http://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/economic-crime/ec-report-fraud.html) and to the London Tourist Board (www.londontouristboard.com).
To get back the deposit, on the other hand, I presume you paid this by credit card, so you should contact your credit card company as soon as possible, if you haven't already done so.

the domain name londonapartmentsdirect.com was registered on 10 Feb 2006 with a domain name registrar called totalregistrations.com

This registrar is based in Stockport and operated by a dormant company and their whois search does not work. It is therefore very difficult to find out who is behind the londonapartment website. I'm not sure who you can complain to to get the londonapartment website down. The OFT might help.

I know it's easy to say now but it always pays to check when a domain name was registered and who is being a site before doing business with an online Co for the first time.

I hope you can get your money back from your credit card.

How awful...the website looks reassuringly genuine actually.

The only things that would have put me off are the fact that the company seems to advertise solely through sponsored links from other websites, I can't find any other mention of them online, the Terms and Conditions also seem a bit amateur too, specifically the terms of payment: "Payments are accepted in cash, traveller's cheques and wire transfer into the company bank account." This doesn't really strike me as a professional and trustworthy company.

Did you receive any kind of contract or paperwork from them before payment was made? If you paid them directly into their bank account, the bank may be able to help track them down to get your money back. Good luck.

I am following this with great interest! First and foremost, it is a criminal matter and not civil as there in intention to defraud. The police should be informed of this and if your payment is via a credit card, then you may have recourse to your credit card company. (It would be in the UK but I gather you have an India issued credit card which may be goverened by a different Consumer Credit Agreement)

Secondly, I believe that such websites will not last long... they are no longer answering calls, so I assume that they have taken the money and run. But it might be worth while e-mailing everyone you know about the fradulant website and ask them to forward the message on...

I too am following this with interest. I agree that the website looks authentic. However, I would say that any place that requires you to pay the full amount three weeks in advance (as listed under "Reservations") and only accepts cash, travellers' cheques or wire transfers should be treated with a large pinch of salt! I personally would never make a booking under those circumstances and in fact, I have never come across it. I know you only paid a deposit this time but perhaps you should have been alerted to something "fishy" if you had read the Terms and Conditions. That notwithstanding, I am vey sorry for the bad experience you had and I think you should report your story to the Serious Fraud office.

I am sorry you have been defrauded. You have been the victims of a deliberate Internet crime, and should report all details to the police before you leave the UK (as well as dealing with your credit card company).

Sorry for the wrong info on this being civil rather than criminal. All the more reason to get around to a police station to get the Londonapartments.com lot well and truly sorted out! Good luck.

(PS By the way, not all Londoners are tossers.)

well i suggest that you post about this quoting the website in every forum on the web that you can, also send this on to places such as http://www.bbc.co.uk/consumer/tv_and_radio/watchdog/ where it will get a lot of coverage and you might even get on the tv... with enough complaints they will actually hunt down the people that deal with that company and humiliate them on tv. try writing to www.guardian.co.uk which is a news paper and they also chase companies down who have done things like this.

As everyone else has said though, i'm sorry this happened to you, it's not a common thing here though. Next time just drop us a line on the forums and we'll find you some reliable websites to book from.

Interestingly i reached this forum trying to look for more details about london apartments direct.
Slightly different problem, a friend of mine visited and stayed in the apartments advertised for blandford street for a week. He paid £775 as the rental for a week. The apartment was supposedly decent, but without any telephone, for which there is a charge. The terms and conditions state that £250 of the charge is the deposit which will be refunded within 72 hours to a nominated bank. There is a charge of £50 for cleaning (1 bedroom flat) and phone and £50 as the admin charges. It is now over four weeks since they vacated the flats. Few phone calls and messages and couple of emails later no reply. Wonder what do you do next?
The guy who met my friends (allegedly the person who deals with these flats) is called Mike...... a pseudoname i suppose, but he is an Indian!!!

the best thing to do is make the biggest noise possible so that other people are aware of it, and there will be investigations into these kind of cons, on british tv they love nothing better than exposing rogue traders.

but I suppose the best piece of advice i could give someone is to speak to a top 1000 member on vt before you go anywhere they'll definately help you out as much as they can.

If you paid by Credit Card i wouldn't worry about it.

I'm unsure how things operate in your country, but in the UK you are covered by the Credit Card company anyway, so you can get all your money back if you paid via this method.

Good luck. I hope this doesn't put you off London. Your complaint will be dealt with seriously.

"Payments are accepted in cash, traveller's cheques and wire transfer into the company bank account." That is why we warned against this company.

Same thing happened to me with London Apartments Direct. I rented a 2-Bed
apartment with them and they asked me to pay the full £1300 including deposit
in advance, I have booked apartments all over the world nd many of them
required me to pay in advance so I was not overly concerned and made the
payment by wire transfer to their Barclay's bank account. As soon as I made
the payment there was no reply to my numerous emails and phone calls. 1300£ is a big sum and I was going there with my entire family and it would have been really incovenient to not have anywhere to stay at the last moment. So I called and called and left so many messages. One time I even got through and this Mike character answered, however he pretended that there was a disturbance in the line and hung up.

Still he did call after 2 days and confirmed that the apartment I had booked was confirmed for me. He then said that his company had a tie-up with a limo company and they would pick us up at the airport for £85 which would be deducted from the deposit. I agreed to all this since I was already vary about getting the deposit back. When we arrived at the airport there was a limo to pick us up - but he took us to a completely different apartment with only 1 bedroom and 1 bathroom which was not even working. He said he was sorry and even though he had confirmed the apartment gave us some sob story about how the tenant at the apartment we had booked would leave the next day and he would move us there the next day. A small child and 3 of us had to sleep on the hard wood floor as there was no linen or beds for us to sleep on for that night.

NExt day again numerous phone calls to Mike but just no response for the next
two days. After 2 days he called and said sorry he was sick (which he incidently always gets whenever there is a problem!!!) We requested him to
atleast get one more bedding so we could sleep comfortably as we had booked the aprtment for 10 days and could not sleep on a hard floor for that time with a small child. He bought us a air bed.

Then comes the time for the refund. Mike has become sick again for 2 months.
I kept emailing his office and when they finally answered they were disgusted with me for demanding a refund even 1-1/2 month after I vacated the place because "Mike had a cardiac problem". Then this Marie person who answers the email says I am welcome to complain to the police as they did not refuse to make the refund but will eventually do it. They have never told me when "eventually" means. Last week they gave me a date that they would make the payment on the 23rd June but nothing came through.

They also added so many more charges like extra charges for the linen (? there was no extra linen and the bed was requested becasue they put us in the wrong apartment in the first place without a room or bed for us at all). Then the limo was charged £95 instead of £85 plus some congestion and waitign charges which were never mentioned earlier at all.

Numeorus emails and phone calls still go answered. This company is very
unprofessional and after hearing your stories I feel lucky that atleast I got
alloted an apartment after making the payment. I still have to receive a
refund of £160 atleast - there should have received more back since we did not
even get the apartment we had booked, paid for and had been confirmed.

I am going to write to Barcalys and to the watchdog at bbc and see what opinion the police gives me. Even though 160 may not seem a large sum - it is for me and I feel very cheated not getting it back.

If anybody has had any positive response to their complaints please let me
know. Everybody else stay away from Londown APartments Direct - they are just
petty theives. I put this post on in the hopes that more people do not get cheated by them.

Thanks,
Nikki

wow so it's not such an isolated incident...

Maybe we should as giampiero if there could a be a section on vt for rogue trader websites such as this...

speaking of which that's definately another program you should write to... "rogue traders" they'll hunt them down for you

Hi Ramesh,

Did you file a police report in the end? We have a very similar experience and would like to know what we can do.

RC

I have contacted the domain name registrar for the site and they have refused to 'unlink' the domain name, saying the company should be contacted direct. This can potentially make them liable under the Proceeds of Crime Act. It would be even better to target the ISP and I will look into that.
I have more details but I am unwilling to post here.
You can contact me on my VT email for more info. This look like the police and NCIS should be alerted at that point. A small court claim against the company, and the ownners should also be considered.
AMMC

I meant 'small claim court'.

Hi:

When you searched for "London Apartments direct" earlier on google atleast you found this forum which would show it was a fraud site who duped people. HOwever the search does not throw this up anymore. Looks like people will still go and book through the site as they will not find this message on the forum and the site looks legitimate. I think we should post the fraud warning on other sites as well to keep pther people off it.

That's a really good idea i think

or we could create lots of tips warning against it... the more links to a site the higher they appear on the google rankings

post your comments about this subject in here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/consumer/tv_and_radio/watchdog/contact_index.shtml

I have sent one in, but it really needs to have people that have had the experience send the problem in as well. It's a quick form just explain the problem as you have done here and they'll contact you when they have enough research done on it

oh one more before i shut up about this...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/consumer/tv_and_radio/rogue_traders/index.shtml

send them the details of what happened as well... please do it though because it does make a difference you may get your money back... if not at least these guys might go to prison for it

Hi:

Sorry cannot shut up about this yet. Two days ago received an email from "Mike".

Quoting directly what I received:
----------
Please go ahead and do what you feel in neccessary, please also note that
I have read some of the slanderous detail posted by you on various sites,
and am now seeking legal advice to take you personally to court.
It is still illegal to do what you are doing. There is a court of law in
this country where grievences can be taken out and a one sided story
posted on a website can still be considered slanderous.

You have not been my only client, For every one complaint , I am able to
put up many happy and satisfied customers,

So please wait for my writ to you before you carry on this personal vandetta

-----------

SO now you get cheated and then get threatened with legal action as well. I emailed him and asked whether he had read even one thing which was not true.... no response to that question. Also asked him whether I would get my deposit back.... no response to that either...

Hope he gives his purported "side of the story" on this site...

Have written to Barclay's bank as they are known to take some sort of action ...hopefully something will happen...

This has really infuriated me now... I had let it go and resigned myself to loosing the £160 owed to me but now I will take it up with all the authorities... police station next stop...

this is how these people work, they'll turn and turn it on you and then scare you into not taking action. As far as the court will see it's not slander. you have spoken truthfully and have just explained what has happened. tell him that you wait for him in court, let him know you can't be scared into not reporting him.

Yes Cham, that is exactly what I emailed them back... I am waiting for his "writ" but of course nothing so far.... what can they say about anything I said...it is true to the smllest detail.

I wonder how someone can operate being so blatantly in the wrong yet trying to turn the tables on the wronged party... this has been my worst experience with booking apartments...

Nikki

Guess wot, yet another "duped" has surfaced either yesterday or the day before and this time they have booked apartment(s) for 12 people. I have referred them to this partiuclar set of postings, as they were wondering if london apartmentsdirect is legit, etc. Of course, I now can't find the posting and it doesn't come up in the London Forum.

I have a tip on my london page that's about london appartments direct and it links to this forum posting... so if you need it you can copy it there

lol if you google londonapartmentsdirect now apart from the top result, the rest of the results are from vt members saying it's a scam... in other news the site has now been suspended... so i guess the police are now taking it seriously