Offering rooms from other sites that requires registration fee
After applying for several places, in the next day, I started receiving a chain of automatically generated e-mails, which stated that I have to register for another website, of course with the registration fee. After asking for an explanation, I did not receive it.
Of course, I instantly unsubscribed from the premium account. Apparently, even if you use the portal for one day, and unsubscribe on the second day you are still required to pay for two months. This, as I noticed, already appears in other reviews and one cannot blame them for establishing a 'great policy'.
Regardless of that, it appears as the portal itself works as 'google', where you search for housing but still are required to pay for other portals after trying to contact the owners.
My story:
The first e-mails came in the day when I applied for the apartments (21.07.18) under:
"Bevestiging reactie op Kamer Julianapark en omgeving, Utrecht" (Informed me that my reaction is given to the owner).
In the second day, I received e-mails in the same order from 'Select huur', which informed me:
via Huizenmarkt.nl schreef op 2018-06-21 21:31:
U bent bij ons aan het juiste adres voor een leuke huurwoning in uw gewenste regio!
Om in aanmerking te kunnen komen voor ons aanbod dient u lid te zijn van ons. U kunt zich eenvoudig aanmelden via onze website select huur.nl
Zonder inschrijving nemen wij géén aanvragen in behandeling.
Onze gehele website is actueel en houden wij elke dag bij. De woningen die wij op onze website hebben gepubliceerd zijn daarom direct beschikbaar vanaf de aangegeven datum.
Even assuming that 'Select Huur' is not a 'daughter company' of 'Huizenmarkt' but simply a company that posts their offers on the website of Huizenmarkt, two questions appear:
1. Why was such a reaction followed to all of the offers I applied for?
2. If the service they are offering is for payment, would it not be fair for them to follow, who are people offering the apartments on their site? For such sites as 'Marktplaats' it is forgivable, everyone is able to sell their products in a way that they like. If they are asking for payment, according to their policy - twice, then a client of theirs accordingly have higher expectations.
Lesson learned: if you don't want to pay 3 times then it is better for you to register on the websites that cooperates with actual owners instead of other websites and donate the money for those that offer the same service for free.
August 1, 2018
Unprompted review