Mitch Lipka is editor of The Consumer Chronicle. (See his profile on Google+)
He had been “Consumer Ally” for AOL on its acclaimed personal finance channel, WalletPop.com, where he led a team of 10 reporters.
He received the 2010 New York Press Club award for best consumer writing on the web and is the 2011 Best Friend honoree from Kids in Danger for his work covering child product safety. He has never met a scam he didn’t want to alert consumers to.
Mitch is the consumer columnist for Reuters, and the Consumer Alert columnist for The Boston Globe and Worcester Telegram & Gazette. He is also the child safety expert on Parents magazine’s website, Parents.com.
He has long been regarded as a child safety expert and advocate. He started tracking recalls in the 1990s and spent an entire year investigating flaws in how the nation’s laws deal with defective and dangerous products.
He has been a reporter and editor for more than 25 years and has worked for The Philadelphia Inquirer, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Consumer Reports.
Mitch is a father of two and caused a recall in 2009 after his son brought home a flashlight from a birthday party that started to burn.
Lisa Kaplan Gordon is a contributing editor for The Consumer Chronicle. She was the star reviewer of As Seen on TV products for AOL’s WalletPop.com and is veteran reporter and editor.
James O’Brien is a contributing editor for The Consumer Chronicle. He is a news correspondent for The Boston Globe. He has written consumer protection news for Consumer Ally at WalletPop, and is a correspondent for Boston University’s Research Magazine.
Investigative Guy John Mattes, a longtime TV investigative consumer reporter, is contributing his video exposes to The Consumer Chronicle.
Jenna Gouin, a senior at Worcester State University, is an intern for The Consumer Chronicle and does a bit of everything.
Elle Spektor is a contributor for the Business Insider, a writer for the Palo Verde Valley Times and Laguna Beach Independent newspapers, and a guest blogger for several national finance blogs. She studies journalism and business at Stony Brook University. She is currently the Arts & Entertainment editor of The Statesman and writes the student life column, “According to Elle”. Ms. Spektor is in the Honors College and is the Vice President of the Greek National Honor Society, the Order of Omega.
Hello Mitch,
I am the owner of Vacation Homes of Key West (VHKW), an established vacation rental business in Key West, FL. I read your article today in boston.com titled ‘Scammers Prey on People Hunding for Vacation Rentals.’ Just a note to let you know the scamming happens both ways, i.e. supposed vacation rental guests scamming vacation rental businesses. The last one we had went like this: A man who said he was from the UK requested a rental contract for a property rental from our company. The contract was processed and emailed to him to print and complete in the usual fashion. He told us he would be paying by check. We never did receive the signed contract, but a few days later we received a check written from a Catholic Church diocese with a U.S. address for the amount of $5000. The total due for our rental contracts are never rounded to the dollar because of taxes we are required to collect so we couldn’t match the check to a contract we had written or received.
We then received several emails from this same man who had requested the rental contract but had not signed it or sent it back to us, saying that he had sent the $5000., but could not make the trip, and that he was requesting a partial refund of $3800. Even thought we have a no refund policy, we contacted the Catholic Church to see if the check was legitimate and they asked us to scan and email them a copy of the check. The church accounting office told us that the signature on the check was legitimate, but the check was not and that it was a scam. The man had somehow obtained a signature for their checks and managed to ‘sign’ checks he had ordered elsewhere.
His scam was to send large checks to vacation rental companies that seemed authentic, and then request a partial refund. Had we felt sorry for him and honored his request, our company would have been out $3800.!
Regarding your warning about the wire transfer of money: Wire transfer is a very safe and inexpensive way to pay for a vacation rental. The important thing is to verify the legitimacy of the agency, and of course the bank. This can easily be done. While it is not wise to ever blindly wire money, it is not correct to generalize that paying via wire transfer is unsafe.
Unfortunately scammers victimize businesses as well as consumers. Vacation rental agencies have been victimized in other clever ways besides check scams. It is a topic that should be addressed. Over the 2 decades I have been in this business, I have experienced several incidents of consumers ripping off (or attempting to) rip off our agency. Unfortunately, scamming goes both ways.
Cindy Rhoades, President
Vacation Homes of Key West
http://vacationhomesofkeywest.com or http://www.vhkw.com
(305)294-7358 ext 3