Dear Idealist Team,
My name is Laura Peretto and I am a researcher at the University of Ferrara. I am writing this mail with great disappointment, following a fraud I suffered on your platform.
For several weeks I had been looking for an apartment to rent in Porto for three months, as I will have to collaborate with a local laboratory for an important research project, and, relying on its excellent reputation, I searched the options offered on Idealista.pt.
On the 20th of March, I found an ad offering an apartment with the characteristics I was looking for, but someone pretending to be part of your organization, scammed me keeping the 800 euros that I paid thinking it was for confirming the reservation.
I found out that I had been scammed through my bank, which proceeded to block the card and then I filed a complaint with the Italian police (I attached the formal deed with a full description of the incident). It was found that the money was diverted to a Lithuanian account and therefore out of Italian jurisdiction.
I feel deeply betrayed. I have always placed great trust in Idealista, which is considered a reliable platform. I thought the transactions within your site were safe and guaranteed, precisely to avoid situations like this. Instead, I discovered that scammers can easily use your name and reputation to deceive honest people like me.
I want you to know that your rules are ambiguous to the users, indeed it is not clear from your website that you do not guarantee a safe and direct booking of properties.
I trusted the advertiser with whom I communicated via Idealista chat, and who then scammed me, and I found online a corrupted version of your legal notice and general conditions for use (with an identical appearance).
I trust that a structured organization like Idealista, aware of these risks, will in light of the facts ascertained and described in the complaint provide a refund.
This is to protect the many young users like me who increasingly rely on online transactions and for whom losing, as in my case 800 euros, is a problem.
Best regards,
Laura Peretto
