Complaint / Warning about 1rentlogic.com and ForRentApartments.com

I'm writing this as both a warning and a request for feedback from the multifamily community about a recent issue with a new vendor in our industry.

We have recently been contacted by several representatives of a company called ForRentApartments.com or 1rentlogic.com claiming that my marketing department gave them our properties' contact information and asked that they contact the communities directly in regards to setting up advertising on their website. (I've been told that the rep is very pushy when they talk to them on the phone) They then send a follow up email that asks the staff to click on a link to activate the listing. This is very upsetting because I have personally told the 2 different representatives that I spoke to weeks ago that we are not interested in their service due to their lack of integration with feeds and the inability to control the advertising. I feel like they did the right thing by contacting me to begin with, but then when they were told no by the Director of Marketing, they began to incorporate bad business tactics by going to each of my communities and lying, saying they were told by my department to contact them directly to set up advertising.

My department has spent SO much time in the last few years on perfecting these areas of technology that I'm no longer willing to even discuss a new listing site without knowing that the integration points are a done deal and that they are already doing it with other clients.

To date we cannot find a contact for them. All of the email addresses that they are using appear to be trash gmail and yahoo accounts.

I am attempting to have the existing listings for our communities that have clicked the link removed, but cannot get a response. I have found that the parent company is a company called Kinetoscope Media and have left a message on the one phone number that I found. 847-376-8003, but no response. The content on the website for my communities are already out of date, incorrect and obviously scrapped from other listing sites. (This really messes with my tracking data too!)

This is an example email that they have sent.

Hello!
This is Martha from ForRentApartments.com, we recently spoke with you on the phone.
Please, click on the below link to authorize me to post your property on our site and your listing will be live immediately and visible to all: (link)

Has anyone else ran into this company/problem? Any advice on how to get our listings removed? I am super passionate about controlling all of our online presence and I know that there are plenty of similar companies out there republishing content. But this site is going to attempt to charge me for the listings in a rent.com module of billing and I would suppose they can since they were activated by an employee. They have a disclaimer on their site stating the minimum charge is 400.00 per lease. 1rentlogic.com/Account/FeesAndServices

Hi Jennifer,

Thanks so much for giving us a heads up on this company. I don't have any experience with them, but they certainly have some bad business practices!!

I find it very strange that they have no contact phone numbers listed!! Here is their LinkedIn info. Maybe it will help!

www.linkedin.com/company/690289?trk=pro_other_cmpy

Keep us up dated on what you find out!

I have had the same trouble with the e-mails looking for activiation. Of course I came to MFI for advice, and here it is

Your reply made my day, Tanya!

Tanya
Just to give you some follow up. I responded to all of the email addresses that originally sent the link emails to our properties and got zero responses. Then I found this email address on the 1rentlogic website. 1rentlogic.com/Account/MarketingText

[email protected]

I sent a very stern and legal sounding "cease and desist" email to it and ended it with... "Please respond that this email was received and that no further action on my part is necessary."

viola! It took a little while, but here was the response.

---

Forwarded message

---

From: <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, July 5, 2011 at 2:37 PM

Your free advertisement will be removed from the website.

Good Luck and let me know if I can help at all!

I too have been the "victim" of this particular company, and frankly, it's getting annoying.

After working for Apartment Guides in Philadelphia and Connecticut, I've learned quite a bit about the competing advertising vendors (especially which ones to use and which ones to stay away from).

Now that I am working on the other side of the Apartment Industry (as a Leasing Coordinator), I have received nothing but unreturned voicemails, unreturned e-mails stating to cancel our listing, and this morning (at 5am EST), I received another e-mail asking us to be a premier advertiser on Forrentapartments.com. (so not only is this annoying, but it also woke me up!)

I did, however, get a phone number for a "Julia Harms" - 847.999.0549 and an e-mail address of "[email protected]" (Seriously, you can't even get an e-mail address with a company domain name??)

I tried to call this number with no luck. No voicemail, the phone just rang. I'm wary of responding as I feel that respnding with "CANCEL MY LISTING" will just give them a credit of a "response" and now put us on as a premier property.

I'm about this close |----| to filing a complaint against Kinetoscope Media and its affiliates. Yes, I know the advertising is free. Yes, I know it's not getting me ANY traffic whatsoever (I had my AG rep pull stats from their site and they are beyond pathetic), but seriously, this is just rediculous now.

Anyone else want to join me on this little crusade?

I have had the same problem with this site. There is also one called gumgumrent.com that is associated with the same media company. I sent a stern email to their [email protected] address and our listings were removed.

This is the email that our managers were getting:

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2011 09:27 AM
To: [name removed by me]
Subject: You property advertisement has been successfully approved

Congratulations!
You property advertisement has been successfully approved for ForRentApartments.com, GumGumRent.com, HoboRent.com! It will only be a matter of time before the advertisement at your property goes from vacant to leased! In order to view your active listing, please feel free to logon to our website and look around. If you have any comments or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact your account manager or customer service at [email protected]. Thank you for using our services!
Sincerely,
Admin.

Hi Jennifer,

I'm sorry to hear about your troubles with 1rentlogic.com. My heart almost fell from my chest when I saw your subject line. I'm the Sales Director for rentlogicleads.com, please understand that we have absoluty nothing to do with 1rentlogic. We take our reputation seriously and actions in the community are important to us.

Thank You,

Gregg Wulbrecht

FYI - as of this morning, their site is currently down, however they are now operating at rewardrent.com. Same contact information, and the same listings are up.

We have tried contacting them through phone and e-mail, threatened legal action, but they apparently don't seem to care.

Just letting you know they're still out there and they're still trying to publish unauthorized listings online.

Thanks!

Note on this thread: A few posts were made on this thread about ForRentApartments.com that threw up some red flags. After some investigation, we've decided to remove the posts, but if the original poster believes this is in error, please contact me directly and we can discuss.