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Let me tell you a little story about how some random person stole my money.
A while back, I made the decision to move to Revelstoke. Naturally, I turned to the Revy Rentals group on Facebook, where I was welcomed with open arms.
To find a place to live, I posted about myself, set some criteria, and waited... until someone commented on my post. They had the best option out there—a perfect 2-bed, 2-bath apartment in a great location, right at the upper end of my budget, with everything I wanted as outlined in my post in Revy Rentals.
[Insert RED FLAG #1]
I started chatting with the landlord. They sent me pictures, I asked a lot of questions, and I got a lot of answers. Everything seemed great, so I signed the lease and sent them my money.
A couple of weeks later, I started to notice more red flags. I won’t get into the nitty-gritty of it, but needless to say, some things weren’t adding up.
I thought, I will ask this person a long series of open-ended questions. Since they already had my money, I was hoping that my bombardment of questions would be enough to cast them astray and reveal their true intentions.
I was wrong.
They actively engaged with me right up until the day I was supposed to move in.
Long story short, I pulled up to the apartment with all my gear, and BOOM radio silence. As it turns out, the apartment I had rented was already occupied—by someone else, completely unrelated.
Apparently, I have rights. Had I known them, I could have avoided losing $1,200.
Additionally, there are actions you can take to weed out scammers before it even gets to that point. Here they are:
1. Arrange a live video tour
2. Meet your roommates
3. Ask open-ended questions
4. Look for holes
5. If possible, use PayPal
6. Read over BC Residential Tenancy Act
The rest of this post will first help you identify scammers and then explain your rights as a tenant in BC.
One of my first mistakes when moving to Revelstoke was not getting a tour of the residence—rookie mistake. Instead, the landlord sent me a bunch of photos that all looked great. However, anyone can find apartment photos online and reuse them.
By asking for a live video tour, you can confirm that the person you're speaking with actually has access to the apartment... funny how that works.
It is important to meet your roommates before signing a lease. You’d think this would be obvious, but apparently not for me.
I asked for my roommate’s contact information after signing the lease so I could get to know him. The scammer conveniently had a fake email address ready for me to contact my fake roommate. So I emailed him, and—surprise—I got no response.
By meeting your roommates in advance, you can:
This one is simple: open-ended questions increase the amount of effort a scammer has to put into deceiving you.
Creating detailed responses to open-ended questions is much harder than answering yes or no. It gets even trickier when they need to maintain consistency in their story.
Pro tip: During your video tour, ask five open-ended questions all related to the same topic. If they are lying, it will be difficult for them to maintain consistency. If there are holes in their story, this will help you catch them.
Compare the photos you receive with the apartment information on the lease. Look closely at the images and verify that the details align with what you’ve been told.
I didn’t notice this right away, but the lease I signed was for a first-floor apartment, while the photos clearly showed a unit not on the ground level. I assure you, I do have brain cells—I just don’t know where they were when I signed that lease.
Ask about using PayPal for sending deposits. PayPal allows you to get your money back if you can prove you were scammed. This is significantly easier than recovering money from an E-Transfer, which, in my experience, is almost impossible.
You can read more about PayPal’s refund policies here.
Finally, you have rights. Now, I’m not a lawyer, nor am I qualified to give legal advice, so I won’t.
However, you can learn more about BC tenancy rights by clicking here. It’s definitely worth reading.
To summarize, you can avoid scams by making it harder for scammers to deceive you. I was an easy target, but you can learn from my mistakes by following these guidelines:
1. Arrange a live video tour
2. Meet your roommates
3. Ask open-ended questions
4. Look for holes
5. If possible, use PayPal
6. Read over BC Residential Tenancy Act
Don't get scammed folks!