The first thing I obviously had to do before moving to London was to find a place to live. I started looking for a place on the web, as I was still living in Spain, and a word began to appear more a more frequently, and this word is "scam":
SCAM: a fraudulent business scheme
And it was not just a word. I had already discovered the reputation London has for being one of the most expensive cities in the planet but still wanted to find that "bargain" and contacted "flat owners" through different sites. Of course I also contacted people who were genuine landlords but had the opportunity to come across some examples of real SCAMMING.
The funniest SCAMMER was someone who claimed to be a reverend moving away on a mission and for whom money was not important. The important thing for him, he said, was to find someone who took good care of his house while he was away, a house which looked pretty much like a five star hotel room. Others were not that obvious, but I began to identify some of the tricks and to my disappointment, I discovered that it was very difficult to find a bargain in London, especially if you are not there to check by yourself.
Of course, this is not something to laugh about, and some SCAMMERS have managed to deceive people by making them believe they are the real owners and taking a minimum of a 3-month-rent deposit (which can be a considerable sum), and then the real owner had turned up to everybody's surprise (but the SCAMMER, who would have disappeared).
Here are some comments from "Gumtree", a site which works like "Cambalache" or "Segundamano" here in Britain and which provides a lot of warning and even a forum to denounce SCAMMERS, as it is something that escapes their control:
Beware of SCAMMERS. It is already happening in Spain too.
So, what did I do in the end? I followed my tutor's advice and decided to go to a State Agent, but this is another story...
