Some friends and I are going to Las Vegas in December and have found a house to rent for the week we are there. We're getting a shocking good deal, hundreds of dollars cheaper than what was listed in the original posting. When I was Googling the address, I found out that the property is listed as a foreclosure.

They've asked for a $400 deposit and then the payment in full 30 days prior to check in. I've countered by telling them I saw that the property may be in foreclosure and is it okay to pay the full amount when we get the keys. It's kind of an awkward situation. I want to help them out, but don't want to get burnt and have a horrible holiday.

What can we do to protect ourselves against the house being repossessed before our vacation in December? Is that even a possibility? Will putting it on a credit card make a difference if we need to fight it? Does this situation stink worse than Las Vegas casino that's been smoked in for 50 years and should I run far far away?

Thank you,

Kelly from Canada

PS: In a side note, they've also asked for a 2.3% "credit card processing fee". I thought this wasn't allowed; is it best to take it up with the property owners or our credit card company?

We think you've made an excellent case for not going ahead with this rental. How much is your peace of mind worth? And you're correct, the processing fee is not allowed for companies that take credit cards as a part of their normal business activities.

We're going to toss this one out to the crowd. What should Kelly do?

(Photo: kevin dean )

Jason writes:

On Thursday I went to Blockbuster and rented a videogame for 8.47$. The next day I checked my online statement to find out that I was charged 8.47$, and then another separate transaction from Blockbuster for 1$. Considering the guy behind the counter had no idea what he was doing at the time I figured he made a mistake and called the Blockbuster back to investigate. They informed me that it is a relatively new policy on all in-store rentals for debit/credit cards in which before charging you the rental for the game, they first bill your card $1 to make sure that it is active, then they bill the rental in addition to that. The manager I spoke to said that they refund the $1 at a later date, but here I am almost a week later with no refund. If this is even legal, why not just charge the $1, and if it works, charge the normal rental price subtract the $1?

Ugh.

(Photo: Seth W )

Dear Consumerist,
 
I just got off a red faced phone conversation with Budget Truck Rental's head of corporate customer service "Wayne" and I thought I would share the conversation. I rented a truck from Budget to pickup 3/9 so I could move some furniture. I live in Kentucky and rented the truck 150 miles away in Indianapolis.
 
When I showed up to pickup my truck, at 1:30, the store was closed even though the posted hours stated they were to be open for another half hour. So I was stranded without a truck 150 miles away from home. Still hoping to salvage the day I called the Budget 1800 number to try to find another truck.
 
Budget's customer service said they were terribly sorry for my inconvenience and said they would find me another truck right away and give me a discount. Two hours later they were unable to locate a single Budget truck in a 50 mile radius and said that they would still send me compensation for my trouble. They discussed giving me a $75 MasterCard gift card since I was already going to be out one of these anyway since I rented the truck during a MasterCard promotion.
 
Two weeks go by and still no "compensation" but I do get a $50 fee show up on my credit card statement from Budget. I called Budget to see what this was about and they said it was a no show fee since I never picked up my truck... lets rewind here I didn't pick up my truck? After a half hour of debating I get up to corporate and finally get my $50 refunded but they said they never promised any compensation and that my online truck rental in no way guarantees a truck but only a rate.
 
So not only did I not get any compensation but they also erroneously charged me $50 dollars and I got to be out 300 miles worth of driving. So moral of the story if you are rent from Budget you may get royally screwed.

Blockbuster managed to lose $35 million in the third quarter, and its customers have been writing in to complain about benefits being cut from their "Total Access" packages.

Not good.

From Forbes:

Chairman Jim Keyes announced that Blockbuster will reduce the number of people currently employed by the company in an effort to reduce annualized overhead costs by approximately $45 million.

As if any more proof was need that Blockbuster Total Access program essentially failed to compete effectively against Netflix (nasdaq: NFLX - news - people ), Keyes noted that "the company will no longer be narrowly focused on its online subscriber count but instead will concentrate on the growth of, and report on, its total membership."

"Rights management" software would allow the movie to be played on either an iPod or iPhone for the duration of the rental period. CNNMoney points out that Video On Demand has proved lucrative for cable and satellite providers—and none of them have as many customers as Apple.

That being said, we've never really understood the desire to watch a whole movie on an iPod. To each his own, we guess.

iTunes movie rentals? Maybe soon [CNNMoney]
(Photo:Earth2Kim)

He writes:

I went to the apple store today because a large portion of the touchscreen on my phone decided to stop working in the middle of writing an email. As a backstory, this is my second iphone. My first iphone had bad RAM or something and was replaced in 1 week after it would repeatedly freeze up and require a software restore.

The Apple "Genius" confirmed that it was a hardware issue, but that it would have to fixed at a depot which would take a few days. he then offered me two options: 1_ take the SIM card home and put it in another phone 2_ pay $30 plus a $500 deposit to rent an iphone while mine is being repaired.

I just sat there for a moment, then quietly replied "You're fucking kidding me." I told him that I flat-out refused to pay for their faulty hardware, and that I paid $500 for a phone that was expected to work for a year , not be fixed or replaced every few weeks. I wasn't getting a battery replaced, I wasn't dealing with user damage, I was dealing with faulty hardware which he had just confirmed.

I asked him to get the manager to waive the loaner fee. He refused as well.

So I immediately called Apple Care (in the apple store) , escalated it up a level, and went over four points:
1_ This is a hardware problem that is emblematic of poor quality control . This is the second defective phone I've been given. And I'm still way within the first 90 days of purchase !
2_ Apple did not announce a defect policy that customers would have to wait several days or pay $30 for a loaner until after I had purchased the phone. there's no way in hell I'd have bought an Iphone if i knew that I'd have to rent one for $30 whenever an issue comes up.
3_ There are multiple class action suits against Apple concerning this issue, and apple tends to lose class actions.

With that in mind, the Apple Care agent finally agreed that it was only fair that they waive the loaner fee and try to keep me as a customer. They made a note in the file to waive the fee, and then I went back to the Genius Bar to get it swapped out.

People can say how bad AT&T is non-stop, but since switching to the iPhone from Sprint I've only averaged 2 dropped calls a week. I don't think I've ever had a conversation on Sprint that didn't drop out.

On the other hand, the Apple customer service has been nothing but awful. The phones have an obscenely high defect rate— just go to an apple store count at how many exchanges they do in a 30 minute period. These aren't phones that are cracked or broken - they're ones where the hardware is just screwed up and makes the phone half- work and be unstable. Some friends in SF said that so many people bring defective iphones to the apple store there, that they don't even bother trying to charge people for a loaner.

I couldn't find anything in the consumerist covering this yet. I think people should remember that if you can't resolve something to your satisfaction in the Apple Store, you can turn to Apple Care, and eventually Apple Corporate.

Jonathan

As I started looking for places, I noticed everything that used to be for rent was now for sale due to the same foreclosure effect that happened to my landlord.

It also appeared that the rents were going up..... but... were the really? or am I just paranoid and bitter?

Since I was waiting to get my research published, I figured I could waste ample amounts of time coding perl scripts and learning google maps.

This project was born out of boredom.

CraigStatsSF [via BoingBoing]

For a pre-paid one month economy car rental for $632.03, on January 16th Hertz rented me a 2007 Blue Chevrolet , Lic#5981AVB in good condition at the Los Cabos airport. I declined to purchase insurance. Late on the night of January 20th, during a rainstorm, a tire blew out on the vehicle; so, after exchanging the tire with the spare the following morning, on January 21st, I returned the vehicle to the agency at their suggestion and wrote a full report. The agency assured me there would be no problem of any charges.

Upon returning to the airport three weeks later, the manager, Eleazar G. Leyva informed me that Hertz was demanding payment of $60.00US for damage to the tire. Anxiously on my way to a plane, I agreed to the charges, more for the sake of expediency rather than out of any sense of obligation. Subsequently, my credit card was charged $499.48

We think Kathy should stop dealing with Hertz and start dealing with her credit card company.

Since Kathy declined the insurance when she rented the car, she should be covered under her credit card's auto rental insurance waiver. Here's an example of Visa's coverage. If Kathy is still within the time period for filing a claim, she could deal with this issue that way. However, we think there's something shady going on in this case. The Hertz agent told her the charge would be $60, and then billed her for $499.48. This sounds like fraud. We suggest that Kathy contact her credit card's fraud department and report the Hertz agent. In this case, it's time for a chargeback. —MEGHANN MARCO

Kathy writes:

For a pre-paid one month economy car rental for $632.03, on January 16th Hertz rented me a 2007 Blue Chevrolet , Lic#5981AVB in good condition at the Los Cabos airport. I declined to purchase insurance. Late on the night of January 20th, during a rainstorm, a tire blew out on the vehicle; so, after exchanging the tire with the spare the following morning, on January 21st, I returned the vehicle to the agency at their suggestion and wrote a full report. The agency assured me there would be no problem of any charges.

Upon returning to the airport three weeks later, the manager, Eleazar G. Leyva informed me that Hertz was demanding payment of $60.00US for damage to the tire. Anxiously on my way to a plane, I agreed to the charges, more for the sake of expediency rather than out of any sense of obligation. Subsequently, my credit card was charged $499.48 for that problem. I've been assured by Traci Atkerson of Hertz Customer Relations in Oklahoma City that that is fully in keeping with standard practices of the car rental industry in most countries.

$500.00 seems a wildly unreasonable amount to pay for such a small item. It's difficult to imagine how Hertz arrived at that sum. It might have been reasonable if all four tires had been damaged. I understand that tires are more expensive in Mexico than in the States, but surely they are not the price of a round trip ticket.

Has anyone else had this sort of experience with this company? Are these prices in line with Hertz policies?

On Demand and on DVD at the Same Time [New York Times]

In related news, the guys over Craigslist have suddenly found themselves under fire from anti-prostitution groups for a recent surge of ad rental advertisements offering low rent to women in exchange for sex. One recent ad on the site reads: "Upscale executive seeks beautiful female 18-24 to live in his luxury condo in Coral Gables for $1/month in exchange for some light duties. Help take care of dog, cook occasionally. Sex 2x/week. Serious inquires only. Please email a picture for consideration." It's blunt, we'll give them that. And slightly creepy.

But it raises an interesting question: is a domestic arrangement for sex in exchange for a place to stay the same as prostitution? Are the same laws applicable? Even if they are, should prostitution — a fact of life and one of the oldest professions on earth — really be illegal? If prostitution was legal, women who choose to prostitute themselves could conduct their trade in far safer, cleaner and better regulated environments. Surely reducing the prominence of violent pimps, sexually-transmitted diseases and drug addiction is a more moral position than allowing these things to flourish under the illegality of prostitution.

We're sure you guys have opinions. Let us hear them.

Now you can pay rent by having sex [World Net Daily]

Here's where we stand: we like Netflix, on the whole. It does work as advertised. We don't like the throttling, although we can understand the need to give new customers preferential treatment. (We don't agree with that philosophy, but we understand it as a business model.)

So here's a much better question: how would you fix it? Is the answer as simple as making the turn-around time the same for every customer? (Thanks, Tim!)

Netflix sends frequent renters to the back of line [CNN]

Last night a local New York news team filed this report about everyone's favorite landlady, Gloria Trembicky, she who inspired the landlord complaint site, Trembicky.com. Here is the report in full, thanks to one Mr. Knit Wit.

sneaky flutes posted this on Jan 26th, 2006 at 01:08:43 pm
basically i'm considering blowing off my rent for the last two months on my lease and saving the money on a new, nicer place. i'm just trying to cover the stupid broker fee that i would otherwise not be able to come up with in time.

i'm a little worried about the reprecussions of this. firstly, what would the landlord be able to do? i'm pretty sure he would rather not spend the extra $$$ to take me to court. would this look bad on my credit? would the new landlord be able to look up this information? what if i tell the new landlord i was just living with friends, and was not on any lease? would they be able to look this info up?

i'd rather be honest but this place sucks. there's a ton of things he never fixed anyway. why should i pay my stupid rent?

While we certainly welcome your complaints about landlords, as well, we also know what it's like to try and get a new site off the ground. If you've got a hairy tale of rental gone bad, why don't you drop them a line.

And a word of advice to bad landlords everywhere: Be sure to register your vanity domain before you start being a scum bag, lest it become the property of those who hate you.

Dave A. writes:

My girlfriend (now my wife) and I were living in Manhattan and decided to move in together. I wasn't too particular about where I lived, but she was - doorman building in a nice neighborhood and near Central Park. After many weekends of searching thru the NYTimes classified we find a huge 620 square foot 1 bedroom (not a studio) apartment on 66th and Columbus right near Lincoln Center and 1 block away from Central Park. This huge space was renting for the $1451.50 per month. What a bargain - more than $2 per square foot per month.

As part of the lease, you had to fork over 1st months rent, and 2 months security deposit. Not a small amount of cash for two mid-twenty-somethings not making a ton of cash, but the place was in a nice building with a great view looking south, you could even see Lady Liberty on a clear day. And the most fantastic part of it was that, for free, they threw in millions and millions of cockroaches infesting the entire building. No charge for pets, wow, what a deal.

So we complain to the super, and they do a bug bomb of our apartment. Wow, miraculously all the roaches disappear...for a day or so. Then, our neighbors, who now have twice as many roaches as before, complain to the super, and he bombs their apartment. Next thing we have All of our roaches back, but our neighbors roaches too - and they refused to pay us for pet-sitting them. How rude! This goes on for a few months, roaches back and forth. It got so bad at times that when you flipped on the lights in the kitchen (if a corner of an apartment can be called a kitchen, that, I swear, the roaches looked at as a gave us the finger and said "Lights don't frighten us, give us your crumbs." So we can't take it anymore and decide that we need to leave NYC. Well say goodbye to our 2 months security deposit. Hello becoming a family of gypsies. These roaches were so bad, that I had a couple of iguanas in a large tank in the apartment, the roaches infested the tank and were living among the igs, even getting into the cracks in the large pieces of wood in the tank. After moving out, I soaked that wood in a bleach/water solution for a few days, figuring this will kill them. A few days later, roaches, literally, coming out of the wood(work). That story still gives us the willies and feelings of longing for that lost $3000.

Here is my tragic tale of woe from an apartment in Baltimore, MD.

To accommodate my job, I moved from the suburbs to Baltimore City. I found an apartment in a cool old building and was set to move in a couple days after law school graduation (conveniently, when my family would be in town to help me move). Two days before move in, the leasing company informs me that the building did not pass its lead paint inspection due to chipping paint on the outside. They assured me that it would only be a couple of weeks before the building was ready, and that they would house me temporarily in a studio apartment in one of their other buildings. And they offered to have their maintenance men move my stuff again, since the delayed move in date would have otherwise required me to hire movers. Sounded good to me.

THREE AND A HALF MONTHS LATER (during which I am living out of boxes and attempting to recover mail lost/misplaced due to the uncertainty of my address, including student loan checks and my irreplaceable entrance ticket to the bar exam), I am finally told that I can move in. I prepare to move, and they call me again to tell me that the INSIDE of the apartment has now failed lead paint inspection. Fortunately, this only caused a delay of one week.

Over the weekend, I help move my stuff in to my new apartment. It starts raining, and since the complex only has a pickup truck (of COURSE they did not rent a moving truck), we had to stop. They moved in the rest a couple of days later while I was at work. I arrived home to find my brand new mattress dirty and torn, and most everything else scratched and/or otherwise damaged.

Of COURSE, the company disavowed their responsibility in this.

Upon moving in, I discover my oven does not function. I call maintenance. Three weeks later, a maintenance person enters my apartment while I am at work, leaves the door unlocked, and someone consequently breaks into my apartment and steals my DVD player, my VCR, and my laptop.

The company again denies responsibility and informs me I should have had renter's insurance. I told them renter's insurance (which I intended to get, but hadn't gotten around to it yet) would not be an issue if they hadn't left my door UNLOCKED. In BALTIMORE.

The very next day, after being larcenized, I arrive home to find a summons from rent court. Yes, the very company that moved me into my apartment has sued me for non-payment of rent in the temporary studio apartment that I had vacated. In spite of the fact that I moved into another building that they MANAGED and paid rent for that. I called to complain (again). They assured me they would dismiss the case before court.

As I did not trust them, I arrived for rent court the next week. Sure enough, they had not dismissed the case. When the judge called the case, I presented all the information to the court. The representative from their company (who showed up for court in sweatpants) had NO IDEA what I was talking about. The judge dismissed the case, and I had to get a special letter to send to the state bar so that they wouldn't deny my admission for being delinquent in my rent.

I continued a dialogue with them in order to get compensated for my stolen property. They steadfastly refused to repay me, and the property manager was a total condescending bitch about it. I started getting a lawsuit together. Fortunately, the judge I clerked for knew the owner of the management company from hell, and put in a call to him. He instructed the property manager bitch to assist me in putting a claim in to their insurance company, which paid out on my claim.

Then, a new management company took over the building, and I went the months of December and January without working heat in my apartment.

I swear, the building is CURSED.

Even better, it has a link section that includes some helpful places for New Yorkers to search for past violations—before they move into a new apartment.

But really, besides having a need to share this story before it consumed us, we'd like to hear about your worst rental experiences. Landlords are the worst.

[via MeFi]

On August 22, 2005, I booked a two bedroom, two bath apartment in London with a company called Connections Management Group, in Ogden, Utah. It was for five days for our Thanksgiving holiday. They immediately charged my credit card $765 (half of the amount) and the next month, charged the remaining amount.

This was going to be a big family event because my daughter lives in London and the rest of my family was flying in to join us. I explained that I needed a space with a decent kitchen in which to cook and a dining room to serve 12 for dinner and the next day, I planned on inviting several friends over for leftovers and drinks. They sent us digital pictures of a lovely flat in Sloane Square once owned by the dancer Rudolph Nureyev. We booked it and we sent out invitations, made an electronic market order for the food, etc.

We were flying over on Tuesday night. Up until that day, we continuously received emails saying that they were expecting us, what the procedures for entry were, etc. On Monday afternoon, we also received an email saying "So sorry, there's a problem with the flat and it has been double booked, so you are out." To say that I was livid was an understatement. And to have been notified in such a fashion was the height of unprofessionalism.

When I called asking for Thomas Moore, I ended up speaking with his son, Thomas, Junior, who had booked the flat in the first place. He said the other couple was already in the flat and it was just too bad, implying that they had booked for a longer time. Forget the fact that I had done this three months earlier. He also said he had worried about it all weekend (which would have allowed me more time to work on the problem) but he said he was so upset he couldn't call me. Finally, I asked to speak to his father who literally screamed at me that I shouldn't be bothering him. He ranted on about how this never happens. (Later I learned from other agencies that this is far from the first time for them.) The son then sent two options—-neither of which suited our purposed. One looked like a black and white Holiday Inn, the other was a private club. Neither had the facilities for us to entertain our guests. After several more calls, the son suggested I call other two other agencies. I then spent the entire day before leaving trying to work out the problem and, while solved, it was not what we had anticipated and we had to notify all the guests, purveyors, etc. When we returned, Mr. Moore said, "Of course you will get all of your money back right away. In fact, he said, he had "already issued a credit to my card". In checking my card, no credit appeared for a month. After several more calls, he then said, "Oh, the bookkeeper sent a check because it cost him too much money to credit my AmEx. Several weeks later, we finally did receive a check after some more lies. This man and this company are loathsome and hopefully no one else will be duped into using them.

Some people apparently don't think much of Enterprise rent-a-car, however, and one has set up 'FailingEnterprise.com,' where he not only details his personal problems with the company, but has set up forums for others to "share their misery" and a blog that details his ongoing attempts at a satisfactory resolution.

The claim to be the "2nd most popular company complaint site," so if you've got an inkling to take on a company yourself, you could do worse than to use Failing Enterprise as a template. (The first most popular? PayPalSucks.com.)

Wanted to point out a bad experience I had yesterday with the Gamefly deal; [A sale we had linked to - Ed.] not the deal itself but a link they post after it which harvests all of your personal info from Gamefly (including credit card details I think) by simply submitting any e-mail address. You do get a 10 buck coupon but ugh man, I promise you my mailbox is going to be friggen' overflowing with junk next month - this site was all sorts of sketch.

I'll append my rather idiotic rant to them after the ordeal, which goes into a little bit more detail. Yeah I was a bit of a dumbass filling out that e-mail address, but I wish I had a screen grab of that page; it really looks like you're not commiting to anything by entering a j.random@foobar.com address.

Greg's angry email to Gamefly after the jump.

Hello all,

I want to register a pretty stern complaint.

I just finished purchasing two used games on your site, upon receipt of your first game I followed the 'click here for a ten dollar discount on your next purchase!' link out of curiosity. I was met with a whole hell of a bunch of jargon and I immediately became suspicious. It ranked on par with those seedy 'GET A FREE PS3/PS4' advertisements you see sprinkled around small cheap-ass websites. I was a good deal surprised that Gamefly was using such an advertising venue.

Still, I do what I normally do, which is play the 'what do the really want game' which involves plugging in a bogus e-mail address and seeing what other information the site will try and grab from you before it offers up the goods. Surely there is nothing binding with entering a bogus e-mail address, right?

Wrong. I enter a completely fictitious e-mail address and to my surprise the next screen comes up with my ten dollar coupon (nice, I think) and... all of my private information including my home address!

WHAT THE HELL? How did they get that? I'm extraordinarily cautious with my personal information and if I read this page correctly they have everything; possibly even my credit card info. I'm absolutely horrified - yeah the front page mentioned something about my personal details but it didn't say anything that it was going to automatically harvest it when you enter a friggen' e-mail address. If it did it must have been buried in some obscure legal jargon written in 6 point font. My knee jerk reaction was to close the window, as if I just got a virus or something.

So I make another purchase, use the coupon, half for the ten bucks off and half just to see if the thing is legit. The link is still there, but it leads me to a completely bogus 20 dollar off a rental car coupon site whose base URL doesn't really point to anything related. I now can't even go back to the original site and see what I've just been conned on.

Of course they got my information from Gamefly. Hey, I'm sure that your privacy policy allows to pass my info on with consent but this instance is both disengenious and absurd. As a result, you've lost a great amount of credibility to me; it's like going to Fry's Electronics to buy something and being forced to take a tour through their neighboring brothel after check-out. It's sleezy, it's bad business, and you're going to lose me and a friend or two I convinced to sign up because of it.

So A) I'd like an explanation, preferably in something that isn't full of lawyerese. Basically, why is Gamefly allowing vendors to do such dubious advertising on its site? Why is it passing personal info to these advertisers in what is quite obviously a terribly misleading digital signature contract (if that contract even exists)?

B) If at all possible (I'm assuming not) I'd like you to get all traces of me off that advertiser's database[s]. They/You can have their/your dirty little 10 dollar coupon back.

C) I want a valid URL of this advertising company; something where I can reread that initial page in it's original entirety.

That I have to author this to you on Christmas day is even more of an aggravation. A quick response would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely, Greg B

If you recall, this is the same 'no fees' program that, you know, charged a lot of late fees to customers.

Blockbuster last winter said it would drop late fees, but its fine print said the company would charge consumers the cost of the video if they kept the movies too long. If the movie was subsequently returned, the charge would be refunded but there would be a $1.25 restocking fee. In March, the Dallas-based company settled complaints heard in 47 states and authorized refunds for offended customers.

Oh, we've always wanted to ask: Who tears off just the very tip of a movie ticket? (Thanks, John!)

Late fees return at some Blockbusters [AP (USAToday)]