LODGING AND RENTING


LODGING SAFETY

This is very important: please check out your hotel thoroughly before making any reservations. There are many locations in NYC that call themselves hotels, and they send you beautiful brochures that seem to have really cheap prices. The problem is, the brochures might be 20 years old and the so-called hotels might be based on single room occupancy. Some of these locations are filled with criminal types and drug addicts, and you won't know until you arrive and see the place. Now you're stuck with no other place to go. I personally know of a couple of cases where this actually happened to tourists, but I was lucky enough to find a place for them to stay.
We provide a service to check out or find a desired lodging location.

Room Security:

When you arrive at your hotel, stay with your luggage and follow it to the main desk because it may disappear. Make sure no one helps you with your luggage except for a hotel employee or the driver who brought you there.

When the bellman takes you to your room, check the entire room while he is there to be sure no one is already hiding in there and waiting for him to leave.

Make sure the phone works, and that is dials 911 directly.

Check all windows and balcony doors to be sure they are all locked. If there is an adjacent room door, make sure it's locked.

If someone comes to your room and you're not expecting them, check with the front desk to ascertain if they sent them up. If you get a call from the front desk telling you they're sending someone up to do something, after you hang up, call the front desk back to check if it was them who called. Attackers sometimes call from within the hotel stating they are from management, and they are sending someone to your room to do some repair work. Use the doors peephole to see who is at your door. Never open the door unless you have verified who that person is.

If you loose your key, go to the front desk and see if they will give you another without showing ID, If so security is lax, don't ever stay there again. When you get a new key make sure the lock sequence is changed or they give you another room. If you do not get another room get an escort to your room and have it checked out to make sure someone hasn't entered.

RENTAL APARTMENT SCAMS

Now that good cheap rental apartments in NYC are becoming less available, these scams are becoming more prevalent. An ad will be placed for an apartment open house with a cell phone number to call, and the rent price will be an incredible deal. When you finally meet up with the person renting the apartment, they will show it to you then tell you well if you don't take it now someone else will take it. You will feel the pressure to say yes, and you think you're getting a great deal; the rent is cheap. Now they tell you you must give them a cash deposit for the apartment. They might ask for 2 months deposit and the first months rent and also require you to pay them a fee, some people have even paid 6 months rent in cash. Now after you pay them you try to move in and management stops you and tells you that whoever rented you the apartment was not authorized to do so and you have been scammed.

Never pay cash.

Check with the management company of the building to ascertain if the person is authorized to show the apartment.

Their phone number is posted in the lobby of most apartment buildings.

Check with the buildings superintendent.

Knock on a neighbor's door and speak with them, they can give you management's phone number.

If you get pressured into taking an apartment, beware.

Does the person showing the apartment have a key for access? Then try their key to see if it works.

Beware, some superintendents are in on the scam.

Beware if the person showing the apartment has only a cell phone to be contacted.

There should be an office number and a business card with an address that can be verified.