Anyone from southern california knows how hard it is to find rental housing, at any price level. Let me begin by saying I was ready to pay up to $2,000 a month, so the problem is not that I am cheap. I wanted to rent a privately owned condo on the pacific coast highway, and whenever i searched online (craigslist, newspaper, etc.) rentals owned by WESTSIDE RENTALS would appear with their corporate number as the contact. When i first called for one, They explained they are running a membership-fee type program to help "match" tenants and apartments/houses. I said fine, signed up right then for $63, and immediately asked to see the condo listed as "2-bedroom Huntington Beach, on PCH, dog friendly..." Of course they never post addresses. The woman said, and I quote, "That is only an EXAMPLE of the fine apartments and houses we have for rent." WHATTTTTTTTTTTTTT?!?!?!?! They seriously make up "bait" listings that get people interested and paid. So i looked on the "MEMBERS" part of their website and all that was there after the "BAIT" had been removed were HUD housing neighborhoods, inland condos, crappy dilapidated homes, all in bad areas, not at all beach close. Out of the zip code I was looking, 100 matches came up, and only 8 were actually in the correct zip code. AND NONE WERE SIMILAR TO THE "BAIT".
When asked, they openly admitted to posting "examples" as real listings and not disclosing that. While $60 dollars is nothing, anyone in Orange County knows how hard it is to find a place. To have a company blatently tricking people and taking money to do so is deplorable.
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