Over the last few years, the rental industry has seen a dramatic rise in rental scams and rental scam complaints.
At rentbits, we do everything in our power to ensure rental scams don’t get sent to our clients or renters. It is virtually impossible to stop every single scam email from getting through our system, but for those that do, we hope through education we will be able to hit the scammers where it hurts the most, through economics.
If we can eliminate the economic incentives for scammers, we can eliminate their behavior completely. If we can educate renters, property managers, owners, landlords and agents on the various rental scams, over time, scammers will no longer have an economic incentive to scam.
There are a variety of tools sites use to help educate consumers and decrease the chances of a scammer contacting a client or renter.
Here are some examples:
- Phone Numbers:
- If you post on a site that accepts phone numbers, make sure they either mask the phone number through a tracking mechanism or even better don’t show the phone number at all so you can receive leads and communication directly in your email or CRM system. One thing you don’t want is to have your cell phone or house number out there for all to see. It is very easy to to do a reverse phone lookup and find your name, address, and any other information these scammers can use against you.
- Known Scammer Emails and Phone Numbers are Filtered
- Being proactive, (stopping scam emails from reaching our clients) and Reactive (Immediately stopping scammer email and phone numbers from reaching any further clients)
- Using other proprietary filtering technology and a communication platforms to stop potential email scammers from getting to you
- Educational Tools
- Tools like this one or others can help find rental scams and educate the public before it is too late.
- Scam warning labels on ads.
