Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Would you rent to this man?

Here is an email I received in response to advertising one of our rental houses:

I am Dr. Walton,I saw your apartment advertised on a classified advert on the internet and i want to rent it,please let me know if it is still available and the modalities for renting it.I will be signing a one year lease for this unit and will be staying in it with my wife and Two year old daughter,and i will like to know if the house is not fully furnished,because i want order for some furnitures in my furniture company so i will be able to move in with the furnitures we intend to move in by ending of Novermber and i will like to know the total cost of moving into the apartment, inaddition with the cost of utilities. I am a chemist by profession and i am currently working with CHALFONTS & GERRARDS CROSS HOSPITAL.Hampden Rd.. Chalfont St Peter, Gerrards Cross, Bucks, London .
I will be in the states for year with my wife and two year old daughter and during my stay i will be working with the United States Environmental Protection Agency on a private research work. We will appreciate a quick response to our enquiry via email or you can please call me at my number ++44 7031970241.i will be looking for ward to hear from you soon
Okay, let's examine this, shall we? First of all, this man claims to be an English doctor, yet he has no concept of the basic rules of spelling or grammar. I mean, seriously, if you're trying to defraud someone, at least have the decency to spell things correctly. Then we have the name of the hospital in all caps. Guess what? When I did a search on that hospital, the first website I came to had it written out just like that. Cut and paste, anyone?

So, 99% sure this was not legit, I emailed the guy back and told him I wanted almost $3000 in cash up front, plus he would have to pay for all of November even if he didn't move in until the end. Now, what would you say if someone said that to you? Yeah, I wouldn't do it either. Well, he jumped at the idea. Except he'd prefer to pay by check. I received that email from him at 3:30 a.m. London time - is this guy really in London? Anyway, when I wrote right back telling him we only accept cash, and that I would have to do extensive background checks first, I didn't hear from him again.

But I did get an email from another English doctor almost immediately. Medical professionals seem to be fleeing the UK en masse. And how lucky am I that they all want to rent my house? Maybe I should borrow some of Cheeky's Irish lottery money to buy more rental properties!

6 comments:

  1. Smart on asking for cash - up front. Seriously, I am not a grammatical whiz but I can put together a coherent (mostly) sentence. How do people fall for this stuff?

    Tell ya what, I will give you some of the lottery cash and we can go across the country buying rental properties LOL

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  2. I'm Dr Walton...sorry I wasn't too good with the grammar.

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  3. Cheeky - cool, we'll make a pretend fortune!

    Jean-Luc - I suspected it might be you...

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  4. As I read that it reminded me of some Nigerian orphan whose father left her 3 billion American dollars and needs someone to help her invest it wisely!

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  5. ROFL! You're clever. What a good detective!

    I'm ashamed to say that I trust people way too much. I would have been so excited to rent my home to an English family. LOL. (I would have chalked the poor language skills up to being an immigrant to England, and not natural born.)

    Duh. LOL.

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  6. Karmyn - I'm sure a follow-up email would have included some such offer, LOL!

    Tee - Honestly, the only reason I answered his email was on the 1% chance it was real. I mean, he wanted to buy furniture and everything! ;)

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