Home Exchange Member Duped
Since my last post regarding the rogue Chinese “Home Exchange Company”, I’ve been in email correspondence with a lady who read the post and contacted me, hoping I might somehow help her.
“Faye” quickly explained that she is does not belong to ExchangeHomes.com. She is a member of club whose name I won’t mention, which, she stated, has so far done nothing at all to assist her. But what concerned Faye equally was the fact that they had also (at least to the point when she contacted me), done nothing to forewarn their members in general of the dangers posed by this company.
It would appear that Faye’s club is almost certainly one that’s had its listings stolen by AllHomeExchange. She assured me that it’s the only one she has ever held a membership with. I asked her if she’d ever posted on any travel related forums, notice boards or chat sites. No, she definitely had not.
Approximately a month ago Faye had received a solicitation from AllExchange informing her that they had added her listing to their database and inviting her to log on to their website and validate it. She had unwisely assumed that because AllExchange had her listing as well as her personal information, they had to be affiliated with the club that held her membership. After all (she said), it hadn’t crossed her mind to think that her information had been obtained illegally. Why should it?
She had followed their directions and while on their website noted their proclamation they they were the world’s leading company with 21,000 listings. Inexplicably, even though she already had a free listing with them, she had signed up for another year and provided them with her credit card information.
Faye’s original home club doesn’t communicate with its members via a blog so she frequently reads the ExchangeHomesBlog as well as several others, all related to home exchanging, and it was through these sources that she eventually learned of AllHomeExchange’s illegal behavior.
I asked Faye if she’d contacted her bank to report that her payment had in fact been coerced out her by means of Internet fraud. She replied that she had called and explained that she had paid for a membership she now did not want and they had advised her to contact AllHomeExchange, explain this to them and request a refund.
Clearly she needed to explain her situation in much more detail to her bank. I provided her with a list of pertinent details she needed to bring to her banks attention and also a list of home exchange blogs etc. that had taken the trouble to cover and warn their readers about the potential danger of their dealing with ANY company that spams them with completely unrealistic claims of free memberships.
Hopefully Faye’s bank will now treat her claim as a genuine challenge against an illegal charge against her credit card. If she achieves a satisfactory result I’ll post about her again.
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