Chosing Your Rental Agency for Apartments in Rome
Author: admin
In this post I want to give some advice for people looking to rent apartments in Rome (Italy).
As BestInRome.com LLC, we have a long (more than 5 years) experience in Rome accommodations and we have seen it all. BestInRome.com is the result of an unfortunate experience we had when still located in Rome. My wife was the Account Manager for American Customers of one of the biggest rental agencies of Rome. Having seen with our eyes people being ripped-off by these crooks, we decided to open our own agency.
Our philosophy is very simple. We sell only apartments we have seen in person, we select only reliable owners, we do ethical business; we also inspect periodically the locations we rent and if we are not satisfied with standards, we simply cut these locations from our web site. Many rental agencies in Italy do not care about their customers, they care only about their commissions; sometimes they even declare to be “free of commissions”; who are they? Charity ventures? This is an incomplete list of issues that can arise using certain agencies; we prefer not to name names in this occasion, but we are sure you will spot them:
- Many agencies don’t check-out the apartments they rent
- At best they are completely unorganized. I have seen keeping records of reservations on notebooks (not the computer, the paper version)
- Prices published on their web sites are seldom reliable
- Many are not even incorporated
- A couple of these agencies (including the one that consider itself the biggest in Rome), are managed by real crooks (do you prefer the term criminal?) They are incorporated, but they have fake addresses, offices, personnel etc.
- Many of these unprofessional operators, have websites filled with not existent apartments. The one I just mentioned declares more than 500 rental units, less than 50% of them are for real
- Some of their apartments have very attractive prices, sometimes too good to be true
- Their favorite activity is the “bait and switch” technique. They attract you with a very convenient apartment, then they switch you at the very last minute to a different (and less than acceptable) apartment. Since Rome is full of tourists all year long, and you won’t find another acceptable accommodation, you are forced to accept the new apartment
- Many of them publish fake reviews of their services on both their own web sites and on travelers’ web sites
- Unfortunately the Better Business Bureau has no record of these crooks, because they are in Italy and therefore not in the BBB jurisdiction
When you choose your rental agency, you should read carefully between the lines of their claims. If something appears to be too good to be true, you should be very skeptical. Remember, the information you find over the Internet are not always reliable. Don’t you read newspaper? There are all sort of scam out there. Why should you rely on a foreign entity? An American Company must follow American laws; in Italy the crime of fraud is not even prosecuted and if so, the penalty is a joke.
I am not saying that all Italian rental agencies are unreliable; I am simply saying, that some of them (especially the biggest) are a nightmare. For this reason I suggest you, the Customer, to pay close attention to these rascals; your vacation cannot be jeopardized by these people.
Posted in 
Tags: 
I know what you are talking about. After my brother in law had a bad experience with RomeCityApartments.com, we rented an apartment in Rome using RentalInRome.com. I can’t say who is the worst. They both switched us at the very last minute with the same lame excuse: hydraulic problems in the apartment. My brother in law ended up in a similar, but more expensive, apartment while me and my family had to settle for a crappy and more expensive apartment. I won’t ever again use an Italian agency.
Thanks for your advice.
John S.
Dear John:
First of all thank you for your comment. I must say that not all Italian agencies are so unreliable! There are a few very honest people out there. Unfortunately you have been fooled by these crooks. For a while we rented 2 apartments owned by a guy who later on opened Romecityapartments (without telling us; maybe he was worried by the competition). This guy seemed to be pretty decent at first and we sold his apartments quite a few times. About 2 years ago he switched 2 of our Customers to other units for not better specified problems. He asked me to talk to one of his people, and the guy I had to deal with, was barely speaking Italian, let alone English! To cut the story short, we immediately deleted those 2 units from our web site. Rentalinrome is another story. These are real scams!! In my post I was referring to an unfortunate experience and I was talking exactly of these guys!! I am sorry that a few of my corrupted co-citizens fooled you. I hope you don’t hold a grudge against my country.
Take care,
Angelo.
Dear Angelo,
I think it’s important that your readers take your advice and read between the lines here.
Taken from wikipedia.org: In law, defamation (also called calumny, libel, slander, and vilification) is the communication of a statement that makes a false claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government or nation a negative image.
It is a crime, punishable by law also in Italy.
I happen to work at Rental in Rome, and I can say that your comments here are a gross distortion of the truth. You veiled to whom your comments were directed in the blog, but the statement of over 500 units pointed solely to Rental in Rome. Even without your response to John’s comment, that constitutes an unethical criminal act.
Funny too, the photos of the zones and number of apartment in them reminds me of another website I’ve seen… Where did you come up with that idea?
In 2002 there was a woman who worked for Rental in Rome for five months that stole the addresses and phone numbers from the company and started running her own business in concurrence with Rental in Rome. When it was discovered, she was summarily fired for “scarsa etica professionale,” or a lack of professional ethics. These are the kinds of unethical acts we see in our business, not fake pricing.
I defend your right to promote your business. I understand that you have a vested interest in convincing others that our agency is a scam. But what you are doing is illegal and unethical. I must encourage you to do it legally and based on fact. In skimming your message again, I see at least two comments that are inextricably tied to Rental in Rome: 1) “less than 50% of them (the apartments) are for real” and 2) “These are real scams!!”
I can definitively say that these comments are lies. The first on the basis that I work with the owners of the apartments every day and I can assure you they are very real. The second, I don’t believe your readers are naive enough to believe. Rental in Rome has a history longer than your company’s and by now has tens of thousands of satisfied customers, several of them repeat customers.
Promote your business, but please, take your own medicine and do it ethically. Best of luck to you and your wife.
-Michael
I see that my comment is “awaiting moderation.” Let’s see if you have the guts to post it.
Correction: The story regarding the woman in 2002 that started a business competing with the one at which she currently worked was about a small company called Rome Reservation, not Rental in Rome. My apologies for the error.
As you can see I have “guts” and nothing to hide. So what are you blabbering about? You are talking of an alleged crime supposedly committed by somebody who did not even work for your company and you never met or talked to before? Am I correct? If so, you should know that you are committing the crime of illegally threatening somebody. At best, what you are saying is hearsay in legal jargon; it would not stand up 5 minutes in a court of law (Italian or American or Japanese or whatever). What’s happening here is that somebody in your company is not pleased with some negative publicity coming out the mouth (or better the keyboard) of some of your former customers.
DO NOT DARE to call us thieves again!
DO NOT DARE to call us unethical either! We have a 100% clean record with the Better Business Bureau and have never received a complaint. It’s true that we don’t have tens of thousands of customers (can you prove this laughable number?), but this is our business record. On the Internet there is a comment of a Customer who made a last minute reservation through us and then decided to rent through Rental In Rome (we did not know this at first); even if not legally required to do so, we promptly refunded his credit card (if I recall correctly we just kept a few dollars as a processing fee). He was so happy with our ethical way of doing business that he decided to write a good review about us; to be 100% honest, he was also happy with the unit rented through your company. Apparently other comments found about your behavior are not as good.
Do you want an example? Here we are; read my next post!
Wanna know more about Rental in Rome? Please follow this link:
http://rome-hotels.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g187791-i22-k1632450-o30-Rentalinrome_com-Rome_Lazio.html
I assure you that I did not write that article. Are all these people competitors and for this reason they hold a grudge against Rental in Rome? No! Many of them had a first hand experience as customers!
Try this link:
http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/vr/review.asp?n=3339
This Anna, (just read the article as per the above link), says something incorrect to the customer. A refund is always possible with a credit card, and it is a very easy procedure; even all transaction costs are refunded to the company. What Anna is talking about is a chargeback, which is something no merchant wants (assuming that the merchant has a 3 digit IQ), because an excessive rate of chargebacks leads to an increase in expenses (called discount rate) for the merchant and eventually the credit card company will revoke the merchant account. This is especially true in the travel business, that is considered a high risk deal for credit card companies. She simply tried, as I have seen myself too many times, not to refund the customer as is customary for Rentalinrome!
Should I publish all the dirty laundry regarding your coward boss Paolo Calabro’? Yes, he is a coward, because he signed up for this blog and never posted anything; now he cannot, because I deactivated his subscription. Believe me, his laundry is really dirty.
One more thing. You stated that Rental in Rome has a history longer than BestInRome.com. Completely false and irrelevant!!!!! The domain name for our apartments in Rome website http://www.BestInRome.com was bought in August 2002, while the name of Rentalinrome was bought in February 2004. BestInRome.com was incorporated in the US in January 2004; Rentalinrome started operating as an SDF (Societa’ di Fatto) after or in February 2004. I don’t see how your company can be older than BestInRome.com; maybe after a bottle or two of wine.
What about the firing of this person you refer to? Fired? By whom? When? Or is it that Paolo Calabro’ paid her 2,000 Euro for commissions with bogus checks and for this reason, along with some other illegal stuff going on with that company owned in part by him she decided to quit? Be careful with me; I have all pieces of paper and I may have your butt easily. Ask your friend Paolo Calabro’ why his own son Jacopo (known also as Jack and now administrator of Rental in Rome) was stealing good customers from my wife during the night, leaving her just crumbs?
Let me quote again your post: “I see at least two comments that are inextricably tied to Rental in Rome: 1) “less than 50% of them (the apartments) are for real” and 2) “These are real scams!!” Let me think; are you out of your mind? If somebody makes a generic comment about a not better identified entity and you can infer that the “two comments … are inextricably tied to Rental in Rome” this means that you are aware of your ethic (sic) in doing business. THESE ARE YOUR WORDS, NOT MINE!!!!!!!
Not enough? I still have an email from Paolo Calabro’ stating that he would delete from Rental in Rome’s website the policy (called by you “terms and conditions”) he clearly plagiarized from us. He pretended, as condition for complying, that we had to cut off the website a specific apartment (Domus Aurea). Although not necessary (the owner of the apartment has never revoked the agreement with us), I did this more than 3 years ago, but I still see my policy on your website. Who is the criminal here? Of course his stupidity (he even admitted the plagiarism in writing) has no limits and in fact he answered using an email of Millennium B&B; another website operated by Paolo Calabro’; and now we have 2 connected entities to our “friend” Paolo Calabro’ plus the one of the hearsay. Why does he never appear as a member of these companies? Something to hide? Something related with never paid debts and taxes? Something criminal? Please let me know what’s the matter, I am curious.
Once again, who’s the crook here? Do you really think it is a good policy to piss me off? I don’t think so; in fact this post today was pinged furiously from all over the world. Is this your way to manage your marketing strategies?
I do not understand this comment, which I am quoting from you: “Funny too, the photos of the zones and number of apartment in them reminds me of another website I’ve seen… Where did you come up with that idea?” Maybe you are talking of another website I own and that, at the moment, uses the same exact database of BestInRome.com? They are both database driven websites. I suggest you to sue me for scripting plagiarism; who knows? Maybe I wrote those scripts by myself and I am not guilty of plagiarism and finally I may have your ass on a silver platter!
By the way, didn’t you notice that the two home pages are exactly the same? Even the email address is the same. What does that mean? If we are referring to the same websites this means that you and your boss probably have a 2 digit IQ (just because I never heard of a 1 digit IQ).
I see that nobody answered yet to my posts. Now I would like to give a piece of advice to people with brain.
Rental In Rome clearly states on their website that they have no brokerage fee. This is taken from their about us page. In itself this term is even wrong, because they are not brokers; they seem to make a reference to a commission fee. If so, can you explain how do you make a living with this company if you don’t take a commission? Are you a charity venture? At the very least, this is, in my humble opinion, false advertisement. By the way I checked with the American Constitution; the first amendment says that an opinion is not a crime, it is just that, an opinion, with or without facts supporting it. They confirmed this fact in writing, when once I tried to make a reservation through their service, under pretense. Their explanation was that they don’t charge an extra fee, but that the owner pays this fee to them; this makes sense although it is not the equivalent of zero fee. The customer pays the fee through the owner. We do the same, Expedia does the same, but nor BestInRome.com nor Expedia say that they are commission free. Talk about honesty!
Since in their post they make a reference to the fact that I say that many of their apartments are fake, I am happy to talk about this point. Once I tried to make a reservation for one of their apartments; I was sure that unit was available because we had it too on our website and I had the calendar availability confirming this. They refused to rent me this unit proposing alternatives not even remotely comparable with this one. For some reasons this unit was not available for rentals through them; you don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure this out. This unit was publicized for a price even lower than the price the owner wants; now if you have to add a commission on top of the net price, how is that possible that the apartment costs less? It should cost more, not less! It’s clear that Rental In Rome thinks that customers are idiots. Although in the world there are idiots (ever heard of the Nigerian scam?), not everybody is! Talking of Nigerian scam and some of the dirty laundry of Paolo Calabro’, his 2 (or less) digit IQ made him believing one of these scams!!!!
One of our owners had to threaten a lawsuit against Rental In Rome, to finally see his apartments took out their website, when Rental In Rome did not pay the owner for some reservations; although this is hearsay I have no reasons not to believe this owner. They do not want to take out apartments from their website, because they are after numbers. What about quality?
Still no reactions from these guys and they clearly accessed this blog 3 times today! Maybe the truth hurts and they have no the guts to cover themselves with some more shame.
Now a few links regarding Rental in Rome and Romecityapartments (both mentioned by John):
http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/vr/review.asp?n=2067 This is exactly what happened with the 2 apartments we rented for them (not knowing that they became an agency in the meantime). Do you see a pattern? Problems are almost always related with water damages.
http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/vr/review.asp?n=2006 Switched an apartment without even informing the customer
http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/vr/review.asp?n=2440
http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/vr/review.asp?n=2361 A recurring problem with Rentalinrome; having money back
http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/vr/review.asp?n=2280
http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/vr/review.asp?n=1938 Again water damages
http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/vr/review.asp?n=894 Usual problems in having money back and accuracy of descriptions
Obviously nobody can be perfect and a few complaints should be expected in doing business, but these guys don’t even invent more creative excuses!
Here a link talking of a company with a name very similar (curious huh?) to ours. They are BestRentRome. Many customers called us thinking to talk to them and I have heard horrific stories. Here the link:
http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/vr/review.asp?n=3648