We decided to take our kids down to Disney for the first time and in November we started looking around for a place to stay. My wife ended up finding a villa that sounded just what we were looking for on VRBO.com and the person renting out the villa was Mr. Jorge Gomez.
After talking with him on the phone and then trying to do research online to make sure everything was legit we ended up booking 4 nights with him and mailed him our $200 deposit. After he received the check and it cleared he emailed us back our confimation number and everything seemed to be in order.
That was until 3 weeks before we were to leave for Disney. We received an email from VRBO informing us to stop communications with Mr. Gomez and to NOT to send any payment to him as well. That's when my wife's heart sank as her worse nightmare of our vacation was already coming true.
My wife then started looking around for another place to stay and I ended up calling Mr. Gomez to check and see what was going on and to make sure things were in order.
According to him the Villa was waiting for us and he was requesting our credit card number so we could finalize our payment. I told him we had to hold off for a little while yet and we would call him back the next day.
In the meantime my wife ended up finding a lady by the name of Michelle who had a place in the same resort. After talking to her we found out that Mr. Gomez is well known in the Orlando/Kissimmee area for ripping off not only people wanting to rent someplace, but also home owners as well! Her advice to me was to be careful as he had scammed her as well.
Mr. Gomez had told us if we canceled 2 weeks before the arrival date (My wife's Grandmother wasn't doing good health wise) we would receive all our deposit back. With all the the things we were finding out about Mr. Gomez we didn't want to take the chance of there not being a villa for us we ended up canceling.
Mr. Gomez said he would mail our deposit back to us within a couple weeks. That was 6 months ago and still nothing. We have contacted him a few times and he is always coming up with an excuse as to why he can't mail us our $200 back. He also had called us at one point and said he would call us every week until he could pay us our $200, but we never heard back from him again.
Since then, my wife has found even more people who have been scamed by this man. We have contacted all the authorities, but so far nothing has come of anything.
If you are thinking of renting from him, don't! All you will end up with is a major headache! I just feel "lucky" we were only out $200. I know some people that have been out over $1000!
I wish we would of found this site before booking with him. Hopefully getting the word out will make people run from him. It just makes me sick to my stomach knowing he has been doing this since 2004 and nothing has happened to him yet.
Even though I know there is so much more I could say about this person, the last thing I want to say is that we did find he started another website called http://flvorlando.com / so stay away from that one as well!
0 comments