I admit, I got too excited about a potential house on craigslist. Even though they sent a sketchy/fishy looking email:
"Hey Cmkata,
The property is a 3 bedroom 1.0 bath with garage and full size washer and dryer. Dogs and cats are accepted with a $100 pet fee.The requirements to rent our property are the following:
1. A copy of your ID
2. 1st months rent and optional fee for pets
3. Lease Agreement, I'll bring this to the viewing(It is month-to-month, 6 month or one year)
4. Completed background check for each applicant
The service we use is Tenant Verified: link.
This is an affordable way for me to screen applicants based on prior addresses and employment information. If you have a felony or bad tenant history, I'm flexible and I'll help you out.Contact me when you have your background check. It's in a .pdf, you can print it and bring to the viewing or email it to me. I'm looking for real tenants not window shoppers or tire kickers, right now I have 3 rental properties and a full time job.
What is the best contact number for you? Are you available tomorrow?
Enjoy your Wednesday!
Jean Johnston"
They didn't even read my email to get my name correct, Colin. No, they took it from my email cmkata... how did I fall for that. *facepalm. I also explicitly told them I am not available Thursdays. I have since replied seeing if they will try to set up a meeting this weekend, but as I've read from other reports, I don't expect a reply...
Stupidly, I went ahead and used that link to tenantverified.com which was a mistake. As I was performing all of the actions on my smartphone I came to the point where I wanted to print out the .pdf file they supposedly needed but my phone couldn't open it. It was at this point where I went to my computer and started typing in their website... and the first thing to pop up on google suggestions was "tenantverified.com scam." That's about the time I realized my mistake.
I cancelled my card and am waiting for the transaction to process so I can attempt to settle this. Unfortunately, they have my cell number now and I expect some bogus text messages in the future.
Basically, I just wanted to affirm the other reports on this site and hopefully stop people from falling for this scam. I am hoping they don't charge me $3,995 like I have heard from some other posts. I'm assuming that it's just going to take me a few months and a lot of unneeded stress to get my $39.95 back.