Spotahome Review - AVOID!!!

As my 1st post, I would like to start by helping travellers and Digital Nomads alike avoid at least some of the scams we have come across on our journey as entrepreneurs whilst being digital nomads. My first post will be reviewing Spotahome.

The verdict is AVOID!!! They steal your deposit via fraudulent landlords, don't follow their T&Cs, don't address issues raised within 24 hours of booking, despite promise, ban access to property after taking your rent money, and then refuse to refund you after all this!!!

We booked a property for a month in Lisbon in March by the Landlord, Vanda Ferreira Braz Da Silva from Feeling Lisbon via Spotahome. 

After payment of 2k GBP was sent to Spotahome, the landlord's name was revealed. Looked her up and found lots of independent reviews that she is a SCAM – she doesn't return deposits and abuses guests. 

We contacted Landlord enquiring about this, explainig we need her to ensure our deposit is returned fairly if nothing was damaged, explaining that we had concerns about fair deposit return based on online evidence, asking to provide us some reassurance against the multiple claims online to ensure it doesn't happen to us. Instead, she started harrassing us and being really rude without addressing the issue and banned our access to the property, whilst refusing to refund us the 2k rent money. 

We reported this to Spotahome within 24 hours of booking. Spotahome promise on their site they'll address issues reported within 24 hours of booking, but Spotahome refused to offer any suggestions or solutions. We told them this was not ok, and asked to get our money back. They refused, saying their decision is final. 

We reached out to bloggers who had the same issue as us a year ago with this same landlord via Spotahome Lisbon and were given a refund after publishing their experience on their blog and were promised by the Portugal Country Manager, Pedro Franco Caiado, to address this landlord if the bloggers corrected their reviews on Spotahome on their blogs. 

But this landlord is still operating and still continuing to steal people's money, together with Spotahome, a year later, so that promise was a complete lie, suggesting Spotahome is very happy to have this fraudulent activity and is likely benefiting from it financially. 

The bloggers gave us contact details of Pedro, the Portugal Country Manager, and suggested contacting him on LinkedIn, but because I don't have a blog where I can publicly document my experience, Pedro just stopped replying to me on LinkedIn after investigating my case. Instead, we got an email from Spotahome confirming they will block all attempts from us to get our money back. We tried to claim chargeback via our bank, but Spotahome intercepted it. 

CONCLUSION: Spotahome is a SCAM, they don't follow their T&Cs and promises and they will do everything to steal your money and you won't get it back, no matter how hard you try. AVOID at all costs!!!