Reality not picture-perfect

RENTALS in Rome or Paris, in particular, frequently look too good to be true, mostly because they're not true.

Illustration: Tom Jellett

IT doesn't seem so long ago that Departure Lounge would send away for catalogues of rental villas and farmhouses in the romantic reaches of Tuscany and Provence and get out her magnifying glass to look at the tiny pictures of the kitchen and master bedroom.

One needed a lot of faith, optimism and imagination in those days plus a precise checklist of questions for the villa agencies. Lounge remembers asking for the exact dimensions of a second bedroom, worried that her two tall teenage sons would not have enough space to spread out, and then marking out the measurements on her kitchen floor and making them lie down side by side with their backpacks and their armoury of travelling essentials, including pet rocks, skateboards, basketballs and life-sized cardboard cut-outs of Michael Jordan and Larry Bird.

But of course that was an age removed, because there was no internet access in the early 1990s and when making holiday plans one depended on travel agents, advice from friends, newspaper and magazine articles from credible sources, and an ability to ask, in Italian and French, if the heating would be turned on by October. Lounge and her tribe frequently stepped into the great unknown clutching little more than a handwritten letter with driving directions from, say, Marco in Montepulciano or Pierre in Piedmont, and it was always rather fun.

Now there are a giga-zillion websites to consult about hotels, rentals, all sorts of beguiling options for holidaymakers, from brokepackers to glampers. Rentals in Rome or Paris, in particular, frequently look too good to be true, mostly because they're not true.

Unless you are dealing with a reputable agency, the apartment may not even exist. So you pay a sizeable deposit, often by Western Union or an untraceable method, are given explicit instructions on the address and arrangements by a very friendly online agent with a seemingly impeccable email address to collect the key but when you arrive, Voila!, perhaps there will be a hole in the ground, a kebab shop, anything but the gorgeous boite with toile de jouy furnishings and views of Sacre-Coeur for which you have paid  top euro.

Sometimes the apartment does exist and is for rental but a bogus booking agency has infiltrated affairs, appropriated text and photos and taken your money. "Some [scammers] have been known to use photographs simply stolen from home furnishings or real estate sites. They use fake names and . . . a potential customer is required to send a deposit between 35 and 50 per cent of the total rental fee, usually between $1000 and $3000," warn Christopher de Doby and Susan Pymble of Sydney-based specialist agency French Indulgence.

De Doby and Pymble have prepared a helpful list of the possible pitfalls and known scam tactics but the bottom line, of course, is to use a proper agency such as theirs for accommodation bookings in Paris and beyond.

More: www.frenchindulgence.com.

Pymble also points to what she calls "horrible scam examples"  at parishousingscamwatch.word press.com.

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AFTER an initial flirtation with all things cool and cyber, Lounge is no longer so enamoured of researching her holidays completely online, and is wary of small and suspiciously cheap providers. She only goes to primary websites, not to bloggers with unexamined credentials and opinions or social-networking sites where users with names like Fluffy Gown complain about hotel bath-towels.

Ah, but then she needs a visa waiver for a trip to the US and the roguish rigmarole starts again. There is a new cyberscam that has been set up to steal applicants' personal and financial information when applying for a compulsory visa waiver under the US Electronic System for Travel Authorisation site. The dummy sites, which may pop up in a Google.com search for "ESTA", "ESTA form" or "ESTA online registration", look like the real thing but may want to charge you up to $US250 ($273) for a visa waiver or demand a download designed to harm your computer or install malicious software (the real site does not require applicants to download any form).

According to malware threat detection specialist McAfee, such fake visa sites have escalated over the past few weeks following the US government's announcement of a $US14 fee for travel authorisation, effective from September 8. The official Homeland Security site is https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/ so please do not log on to any other site for US visas. "Make sure to use comprehensive security software, such as McAfee Total Protection, to protect you from viruses, spyware, adware and other emerging threats, and keep it up-to-date," McAfee says. Lounge suspects that is not the end of the story. More: mcafee.com/au.

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MEANWHILE, Lounge must away to her email inbox with its infinite promises of penis extensions and hair-loss cures, offers of millions of dollars from the third wives of deceased Nigerian generals and announcements that she has won the national lottery of Burkina Faso and all she must do is send her bank account details post-haste and untold west African francs will drop in.

This morning's offering: "My father was a rich cocoa farmer and was poisoned by his business colleagues and now I want you to stand as my guidian [sic] and appointed beneficiary and receive the money in your country since I am only 18 years and without parents."

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SUCH badly behaved rascals do Lounge's head in, and it makes her want to scurry back to quill and ink and gentlemen's handshakes. There is a tiny little ray of old-fashioned hope as the gift-giving festive season approaches, however, and that's the re-emergence of journals. Stationery supplier Kikki.K and that colourful institution Marimekko (which turns 60 next year; hands up who didn't lust after an orange-and-brown geometric wallpaper by this Finnish design company in the 1970s) have lovely new ranges with crisp blank or faintly lined pages, so full of promise.

Even Moleskine has broken out its range from basic black to pastels and there are dozens of imitators with patterned covers. Bruce Chatwin used to travel to Paris to buy his in the days when one would never have rented an apartment from a virtual stranger.

All hail the iPad and its genius apps but let's not be too quick to throw away our catalogues and diaries, our journals with their well-thumbed pages, red-ringed birthdays, coffee stains and visceral reminders of the road. I plan to give a gorgeous notebook to all and sundry this Christmas and, yes, I acknowledge recipients under 20 will look puzzled and ask how to turn it on. More: kikki-k.com; marimekko.com; moleskine.com.