Spotahome

I want to warn everyone, especially women, against renting rooms through Spotahome in this house in Parede near Lisbon in Portugal:

Rua Dr. António Cândido 5,2775-236 PAREDE, Cascais area, PORTUGAL.

HUGE SCAM

First of all, the landlord never returns the deposit. He just shamelessly steals your deposit.
Spotahome cooperates with this criminal landlord and shares the profits. You can only recover stolen money in court.

Secondly, the room doesn't look like the photos on the Spotahome. I am attaching real photos here. There is a huge problem with fungi and mould in this house, huge spiders, ants, stench, renovation never completed, everything left halfway and not finished because the landlord suffers from mental illness.

Additionally, if you book a room in winter, be prepared to almost die from cold because there is NO heating in the house. The electrical installation is also broken, the washing machine, shower and internet keep turning off due to a short circuit in the installation (landlord wants to save even more money on a circuit that is not adapted to the building), non health and safety compliance, dangerous for your life!

Furthermore, be prepared for enormous stress and constant discomfort because the landlord suffers from Bipolar disorder, he is a borderline narc, he isn't real Portuguese, he won't even welcome you with a tiny smile when you arrive, forget about helping with the luggage, etc. He will meet you with angry face at the doors as if he is making you favour that you pay him. Very sick, nasty, demonic male with heavy control freak issues. He is constantly unemployed and goes into the house every day and watches the tenants, he has problems with anger control, has alternating attacks of outbursts of aggression and then tries to talk normally and pretend to be normal.

There is no end to the problems, broken door handles, satanic ornaments, mold settles even on your private clothes in the wardrobe, only male tenants rent there because it's such a nightmare. One of them is a pervert. Spotahome protects criminal landlords because together they create profits. If you don't want to end up in the court like me, you'll be safer in a tent.

They take your money BEFORE checking with the landlord if the room is avaliable and they take way longer than 24hours to get back to you (they took a month to get back to me to confirm my booking, take the money and then cancel my booking THE NEXT DAY). They're now REFUSING to give me back the 400£ they took for a booking they then cancelled!

The owner who was verified by this company was a fraud.
Be aware of that! And when you contact them they take no responsibility!

I paid for an apt unit in Madrid (overpriced) but i knew it and sometimes it gives me a sense of security that if am paying more is because i will receive better customer service and a all around satisfying experience. Well NOT THE CASE. I tented a unit specifically with a filter preference non negotiable AC unit for the summer.long story short the electric power goes off since the first week to the point that the refrigerator crashed for the electric shot downs. They kept saying they were on it and just letting my days burn while O got stock with no AC no fridge a lot of money lost in food that spoiled in the fridge and sweat nights. I demanded a relocation as the landlord kept trying figure out nicely the problem but is still day 49 and she hasn't been able to fic the electric problem. Spotahome keeps ignoring my email and phone calls. They don't care, they keep saying they are reviewing the case 35 days after! They made a BIG amount of money on my "service fee" and they also keep 20% of the lady landlord rent. I have been renting air bnb for years and NEVER ran into such situation.
However I am already acting on it a d yes, I have already filled out a complain with the police, the city, and the customer protection program that are going after then with lawyers.

If you have a problem DONT LET IT JUST GO! They are stilling your money and any inconvenience affects every detail of your stay at a foreign country!

They are a SCAM!

DO NOT EVER USE SPOTAHOME.

I'm a student and I was looking for a place to stay for Study Abroad in England. And I made the stupidest mistake of my life booking through Spotahome. I will genuinely regret it for the rest of my life.

Spotahome markets itself as an easy way to get in touch with local landlords across the world with a responsible middleman to make the process smooth. That could not be further from the truth. First red flag is they have no phone number, email, or address to contact. You can only submit issues through a form and cannot directly get in touch with them until they decide to respond to you, no matter how urgent the issue.

I don't even know where to begin with how unprofessional and dishonest this company is. First of all, they are incredibly shady with payments before you even get in touch with a landlord. If you apply for a house just to see more info about it and the landlord accepts, you are automatically charged. No time to look over details, no time to think about it, and no refund possible. But fine, I found a place through them. The first issue I ran into was they tried to charge me first month's rent twice. The landlord demanded I send it to him, but Spotahome was also charging me the same amount upon move-in. It took weeks for them to tell the landlord not to charge me because they get all rental payments (which is weird considering he supposedly has listed on their website for years and has multiple positive reviews (which you can't actually read or verify)). Then, when the landlord starting making up lies and trying to charge me for problems that already existed at his property, Spotahome said too bad, we aren't responsible for the landlord's behavior. Which is absolutely insane considering they list his properties on their website and make money off of him, but if he does anything unprofessional or illegal, they're not responsible. Fine. Then, someone broke into the flat where I was living and I wanted to move out early. But, due to Spotahome's policy, I would've had to pay an additional 30 days of rent so I had to stay there. At the end of the day, I was looking at all of the rental payments they had taken from my account and realized they had overcharged me almost $2000 in rent. I had to point that out to them, and I am still currently fighting to get my money back. I have spent hours and hours trying to resolve this and they simply do not care. They will rob you blind. Look literally anywhere else for a place to stay.

We are unable to get reimbursed for an apartment deposit, for an apartment that doesn't exist. 500+€ gone forever. Don't use this site, ever.

So I booked a flat in Berlin for 15 months when in reality I wanted 3, I was able to make this change easily and successfully. This was the only positive part about this experience. I had booked this apartment out of desperation as it is extremely difficult to find a place to live in Berlin that isn't a sublet of some person leaving for vacation and looking to capitalize on the few weeks their apartment will be vacant. I really dislike this because it places a lot of short term listings "on the market" when a lot of people are looking for a solid place to live. Back to Spotahome...when I booked the flat the payment was declined because they don't take AMEX and I had to use my dad's Visa to make the booking. The bank flagged it as potential fraud and sent him a message to confirm. He confirmed, but I never tried to make the booking again. Spotahome sent me an email the next day saying the ticket was closed. A few days later after receiving tons of emails and texts from Spotahome I sent one of their support reps a message saying the ticket was closed and that I was sick and couldn't move in (I subsequently received a response two weeks later from this rep after receiving more than 30 messages from other reps at Spotahome). Over the course of the next three weeks I've received emails and text messages every 2-3 days from Spotahome asking me to setup direct debit for my monthly rent along with asking me to verify my identity. I even got a message from the landlord asking what was going on and that he was raising the rent on me. This was about one week after I had mostly ignored all of these requests and Spotahome had actually sent me a message saying that I could rent the same place now for €150 extra a month. This company is an absolute sh** show and I would never deal with them again. I haven't even figured out whether or not they tried to charge my dad's card. I received a message from Michael, the guy I messaged in support that said they would cancel the booking and refund the initial fee. This was weeks after I messaged him and I received an email saying the ticket was closed. These people are amateurs and shouldn't be trusted.

Me cancelaron la reserva 5 días antes de mi viaje y las opciones que me ofrecian eran unos 500 euros mas caros al mes y ellos no se hacían cargo de la diferencia cuando ellos me han cancelado mi reserva original

They lied about the stolen and damaged items just to steal your deposit. They are liers and scammers! Don't use this website!

TOTAL SCAM of a service. Please do not be as stupid as I was and use Spotahome.
It seemed good on paper, especially for someone in a desperate situation, like I was. But unfortunate something that seem's too good to be true is usually isn't' real. As was the case with the apartment I booked through Spotahome.
They completely lied about the property and what the living situation would be in general - not to mention the pictures they featured looked NOTHING like the actual apartment.
This was one of the worst experiences I've ever had to deal with as a consumer. Seriously, the list of grievances and complaints are too long to list here. Total nightmare from begging to end.
Customer support (if you could call it that) was horrendous - as was their 'Polices'. I originally booked but because the place was completely inhabitable, I changed that to just the one month (I paid for upfront). They "allowed" me to make this change, but said they weren't able to adjust their commission accordingly. So they took their money based on a 6 month stay instead of 1 month - a huge difference. Also, I wasn't able to to file a formal compliant until I moved into the property but there was a time limit for that too - which they didn't tell me about. So when I finally was able to do so, after a stressful few weeks of trying to find another accommodation because I found myself homeless because of Spotahome, they said I was too late and was unable to submit any complaints.
Their ridiculous policies (which are in fine print) are designed for only them to benefit from - with the sole purpose of ripping you off.
Do NOT use this company. Not sure how they can even legally be called that.

Service ist schlecht.
Ich habe das Zimmer bei ihnen gebucht. Zuerst war eine Reservierung, erst nach der Bestätigung des Vermieters wird das Geld von Ihrem Konto abgebucht.
Nach der Email, die ich von Spotathome erhalten habe, dass der Vermieter meine Anfrage zurzeit nicht bearbeiten kann. Ich habe mir gedacht, ok ich will keine Zeit verschwinden, bei dem Warten auf eine Antwort von dem Vermieter. Ich habe geschrieben, dass ich meine Reservierung stornieren will. Sie haben mir bei Online Chat geschrieben, dass die Reservierung schon storniert ist. Ich habe mir perfekt gedacht, alles abgeschlossen ist und ich kriege noch die Bestätigung darüber. Naja, eine Stunde später bekomme ich Email mit der Bestätigung von dem Vermieter. Ab diesem Moment wurde mein Geld von meinem Konto abgebucht und auf dem Konto von Spotahome gelandet ist.