Rentalia Reviews 191

On March 25, 2025, I was contacted via WhatsApp by a person identifying herself as Helga Barbieri, in response to a booking inquiry I made for a villa in Sala Comacina, Lake Como. Helga presented herself as the manager of the property and offered a 15% discount if I booked outside the rental website Rentalia, stating that this would save her the platform commission.

After agreeing to the discounted price of €6,120, she further reduced the amount to €5,760 if paid in full immediately. I was asked to:
• Bypass the secure rental platform
• Send payment directly via bank transfer or third-party links

She initially sent SumUp links (credit card processors) broken into 3 transactions due to payment limits. All credit card attempts failed. When I suggested alternatives like PayPal, she refused, insisting instead on:
1. Bank transfer to an Italian IBAN:
• IBAN: IT06 Y035 7601 6010 1000 6073 212
• Name: Asmae Barbieri
• Bank: BBVA
• BIC/SWIFT: BBVAITMMXXX
2. Use of Revolut or Wise to send international payments

Despite my effort, and after my bank advised me not to proceed with the transfer due to concerns, I requested a video showing of the property, which she refused, stating she is not currently in Italy and no one is available to show the property live.

Eventually, I cancelled the reservation. No money was sent, but this was clearly an organized attempt to deceive and steal funds.

I booked an apartment on Rentalia in Barcelona using the map function of their website.

When I came to organise arrival for the booking, it was in a location 2.5 hours away from what was listed on the map. The listing owner refused to give me a refund, and instead only offered other accommodation that was similarly far away and so unsuitable. I only found out about this 3 days before the booking was meant to begin, and they have penalised me for booking elsewhere to make sure I had somewhere to stay during my holiday.

The Rentalia terms of service state it’s the responsibility of the listing owner to make sure their listings are accurate.

Obviously in this case the page was completely inaccurate but they have sided with the owner of the apartment and stolen £1200 from me.

AVOID - not even the legal agreement you enter into with them is worth anything.

Where to start? They show one price on the web page but charge a higher price when you go to book - in our case twice as much. We tried to contact them but the system did not recognize my username, even though it's on their correspondence. We filled out a contact form but the site did not acknowledge that it had been sent and of course we did not receive a reply. I canceled a reservation but got an email saying that the cancelation was past the deadline even though I canceled the day after I booked the reservation. I could go on but hopefully what I have written will persuade you not to use this service.

Absolutely terrible. Big scam. They are lying on the price. We booked a flat for 700€. But the real price was 780 as the landlord charged the electricity, the water and some pool fees. Obviously they don't tell you until you pay a 175 deposit so you're screwed if you want to cancel. Our landlord was a pain in the *** absolutely discusting!!!

I requested a booking in Lanzarote, with the owner having 24 hrs to respond, and it looked like I needed to pay a 200 Euro deposit. If the owner rejected the request, or didn't respond within 24 hrs, the request would be cancelled and I would be charged a fee, with the remainder of the money refunded. I had reservations about this but did it anyway as I like the village where the villa is located. The owner hadn't responded in roughly 20 hrs, so with a few hours to go I sent another email to her. She responded quickly and advised the property wasn't available.

What I am really confused about is why I was able to request my dates if the property wasn't available. This does not seem right. I don't blame the owner, but instead Realista. Also, I have checked my bank account and I have a pending payment of 365 Euros, rather than 200 Euros, to Availbook (Realista's booking system I guess). Why did they take almost double what I was expecting? I ought to receive a full refund as I should not have been able to select the dates if the villa was not available. If the owner had rejected my booking because they didn't feel I was a good fit for the villa that is one thing, but being able to request dates that were not available is completely different. I feel like I have been scammed, please don't let this happen to you.

Beware using this site, I should have listened to my gut.

Booked a property with them on NYE 2024 and paid a deposit (€54).
Rentalia couldn’t confirm the booking with the owner and they told me that my deposit would be refunded.
The deposit was never returned despite emails and using their awful help centre- absolutely dreadful company and would never use them again.

Was just about to book a month rental with Rentalia, but having read the numerous bad reviews I won't proceed. Thank goodness for Trust pilot!

7 years on from the Trip Advisor forum warning that they had scammers on their website, unfortunately this is still happening. We almost lost thousands and thousands of pounds. Fortunately we smelt a rat and backed out (after booking flights) but Rentalia aren't vetting what's on their website, made little or no effort to find us alternative accommodation and have not even provided an explanation behind it all. Go with one of the trusted sites....not these guys, you might end up losing all your money if you are not careful.

I booked apartment in Marbella, paid deposit €364.50 and website Rentalia.com said the owner will contact me. Nothing happened and deposit is lost. I now am angry, I have no apartment to stay in and have lost money. I have tried to contact support and no reply.

There seems to be no way of contacting their website or the property owner about the booking that I can find. This website has no customer after care. There should be at least an online booking to view after deposits paid and a refund system should the booking fail.

I had the same experience as the other reviews. I was supposed to pay 800 euros for the apartment we were interested in. Their website kept telling me "ERROR". I tried emailing them, again got "ERROR". I called them, phone just rings no one picks up. I tried numerous times to email the owner of the apartment, the first two times she responded but after that I never heard from her again. She didnt even have the decency to give me any kind of info, whether she rented it to someone else, etc.

I booked accomodation in Spain, Fuerteventura. I then didn't get an address so I contacted the owner. The owner informed me that the property was already booked on the dates I had booked, however my money had already been taken. I told him that I would like a full refund but he said he could not get in contact with anyone at rentalia and that they had the money currently. I have tried contacting rentalia but they are completely unresponsive. Currently I am 380 euros out of pocket.

It is full of SCAMMERS. Wanted to rent a place in Malaga for a week. Owner was evasive when I asked for the exact address. Then we he wanted me to wire the money to him he would not give me his banking address... only basic account information. Then he stopped email me.

We rented this spacious and excellent villa in Albufeira through Rentalia VIP. The agent Isabel was always at hand throughout our 2 weeks stay and responded to any of our requests in a very prompt manner which made us feel very reassured. The villa is in a quiet area but very close to a big Intermarche supermarket and 10' drive to Albufeira town and Peneco beach. The villa was well equipped, with air con throughout, WIFI and with swimming pool (we paid an extra to have it heated which was worthwhile) and a hot Jacuzzi and my children and grandchildren had a very great time with both till late evening. We had a few BBQs at the villa and went out to eat in restaurants within easy drive to Albufeira, Villamoura and Quinta do Lago. I truly recommend this villa and most likely we will rent it out again in the future through Rentalia VIP.

Horrendous! Every booking gets cancelled. All properties are not updated. Unsafe. Just horrible!!! Don't use

Interesting seeing this company has far more poor ratings than positive.
I've emailed them so many times, with no response.
I emailed, 5 times, an owner of a property I am interested in, with no response, but he's clearly now seen that I'd like his property for 10 weeks, and the price has just gone up fot the period I want it, almost doubled ... with no replies to my many emails with questions about the property, and no response from Rentalia about the lack of communication from the lister, or this questionable behaviour.
I'm pretty nervous about booking anything through them now, after reading other reviews.

I had 3 properties advertised on Rentalia for a few years. We got very few requests from them, most of our customers come from other platforms. We are rented 90% of the year, so we cannot complain.
I had deactivated one of these 3 properties in Rentalia, when we started using it to live in due to family issues.
When Rentalia started working with Avaibook, they have transfered all our properties there and reactivated the one I had deactivated on Rentalia. Without informing me of obtaining my consent.
Upon transfer, again without me being informed about this, all 3 properties have been automatically setup on "instant booking" which I do not allow on any of the platforms I'm on. I had no idea about this because I had not received any information from either Rentalia or Avaibook.
At one point I have been informed that I have a confirmed booking on Avaibook - for which I didn't even have a login because I had never registered there. That's when I actually became aware about the transfer of my properties from Rentalia to Avaibook.
I requested that this booking is cancelled by the platform as it had been created by mistake given that my property was not on the rental market at all and had been deactivate in Rentalia.
They have ignored several emailes I sent where I have explained the situation and asked for clarification, and in the end they have informed me that all my properties have been deactivated from Rentalia for not paying cancellation fees to Avaibook for a property I had never advertised on Avaibook.
I found this to be a very dishonest behaviour and they seem to both be dubious companies.
I never got any bookings from Rentalia, so I am not losing anything by not being on Rentalia anymore - but the complete disregard for any decent rules of behaviour in the market is a sign that these companies should not be touched with a barge pole.

Reply to Rentalia: You answer is full of false information.
The booking I had which has caused the problem was NOT visible on my Rentalia calendar and as such I could not cancel it. I was given a link to Avaibook to "manage" the booking which was leading nowhere as I had no account on Avaibook. I wrote an email to Rentalia explaining the situation and asking for cancellation of the booking which was ignored.
I never accepted it either, so it should have never been confirmed according to your logic, but this is not what happened.
Eventually I created an account on Avaibook o try and figure things out - but I couldn't cancel the reservation there either as it had been set up as "instant".
You say you tried to contact me -- how, exactly? I wrote 4 emails to you and got no answer to any of them. My two valid phone numbers were on your website where I had the properties. I has no call and no email or text from you. Someone maybe thought of contacting me but never actually did it...

Further to this issue - I am pleased to confirm it has now been resolved to my satisfaction, took a review to get the attention but all is now okay.

Further to my review 2 days ago about Rentalia - their reply completely missed my point and was of no help so my villa listing is still blocked to me via 3 phishing attempts. I invite Rentalia to sort it out and to refund my subscription right away. How I wish I had checked their rubbish reviews before getting involved with them

Don't use this booking platform. I had to cancel a booking a month ago because a property was sold, to date I have not had my deposit returned. I tried to book another property and luckily was unable too as UK banks will no longer process payments to them as they have not agreed to the banks anti fraud requirements.

DON'T DO IT!!!! That's all we have to say. They are scammers. We rented a villa in Portugal for an upcoming wedding in June. The rental was made through Rentalia. with 400EU deposit. Due to the COVID situation and way before our cancelation term expired we decided to cancel the trip. We were told by the owner that he cancelled his contract with Rentalia for this year ( we've made our booking Oct 2019) and there is no refund to us. We tied contacting Rentalia with no luck.The owner no longer replied to our e-mails. What do we do?
Rentalia - Ref 10642, rented by Joaquim Manuel Fernandez da Silva.

Thanks to everyone who has put an honest review of this company. I am a holiday rental owner and was contacted by this company to advertise my property with them. After doing a bit of research I certainly won't be advertising with them.
I care about my guests, I'm superhost on one website and rated 9.1 on another top website. So I don't want my good reputation and hard work to be wasted.