Scammers are everywhere and they are very inventive. I do not answer my phone unless I recognise the number for the fear of being scammed. At the start of the season we was scammed at Richmond villa. We realised that something was wrong with our guest within half an hour of them arriving. There was 4 adults, 2 were female and 2 males. One of the males kept me talking outside whilst damaged was being caused in our villa. Unfortunately by the time we realised they were definitely scamming us it was too late as the damage was done. It started on day one. Firstly they said the aircon in the lounge was not working. I had checked the aircon before they arrived. Then it was the tv does not work and the fly screens do not stay down. All of which I proved had nothing wrong with them. They then refused to allow us to fit a new aircon unit and refused for us the entre our villa. The following morning we informed them that we would give them a full refund if they left the property straight away. We informed them that the refund would have to come via BDC as we had not yet been paid for their stay. That’s when we knew they were definitely scamming us.

They refused to leave unless we gave them cash straight away. We refused as we knew they would then get a refund from BDC and in fact get 2 full refunds. The following day they sent us a picture of our swimming pool which had been nearly emptied of water. We rushed to the property to see what had happened. On arrival we found a knife size spit in the pool. Not only the pool had been damaged but also the pump.

The police were called but unfortunately they was not interested and getting through to BDC was impossible. Eventually I did get to speak to BDC and the guest had sent pictures of all the damage and tried to say that was how they found our villa. BDC agreed they were to leave the following morning a refund was to be given for the remaining days. We were pleased just to see them go but when we did finally get into our villa we found further damage. Coffee had been thrown up the walls, saucers used as an ashtray, the bedroom smelt of smoke even though the villa is a non smoking villa, 2 fly screens had been broken and the list goes on.

They was not happy they had not received a full refund and they then wrote a very bad review on BDC. The review really upset us at first and then on reflection we looked at all of our other review and it proved they were lying.

Thankfully we have had great guest since and we have put this as an experience .