They had booked an apartment to spend three nights in Bassano del Grappa. When paying, they showed the owner a bank transfer receipt, but the money never arrived in the woman’s account. When, at the end of the stay, the landlady asked to pay in cash, the guests had already left. And in their place there would have been a ransacked house.
This is what was reported by an owner of a tourist rental in the San Marco district of Bassano del Grappa, in the province of Vicenza. The woman turned to the police and then decided to talk about what happened on social media, in an attempt to understand if other activities had ended up in the same mechanism.
According to the reconstruction published by Corriere del Venetothe owner had been contacted by two young people who had asked to stay in the apartment for a few days. The agreed price was just under 500 euros.
To prove that they had made the payment, the customers would send the woman an image of a bank slip. The credit, however, still did not appear on the account. In the comment on the post published on the Facebook group “You are from Cremona if…”, the woman explains that the stay lasted three nights and that, not seeing the bank transfer arrive, she had finally asked for payment in cash. At that point, he says, the guest had already run away.
Food in the beds, butts and a broken wardrobe
Failure to pay wouldn’t have been the only problem. Once she returned to the apartment, the owner allegedly found food scraps between blankets and wardrobes, dirty crockery, ash and cigarette butts on the floors, as well as stained mattresses and sofas and a damaged wardrobe. The conditions of the accommodation and the testimonies collected in the neighborhood would have given rise to the suspicion that during those days more people had entered the apartment than the two guests initially registered.
Furthermore, the owner would have identified, through the documentation shown by the customers and subsequent contacts with some businesses in the area, other payments that would never have actually been credited. Among the reported cases there would be an order worth around 180 euros at a pizzeria and a purchase of around 100 euros in an oriental restaurant. The total value of the alleged missed payments would be more than one thousand euros.
“If there have been similar cases you can contact me”, wrote the woman on social media in an attempt to reconstruct the possible movements of the guests and understand if the same system was used elsewhere.