Homexchange, rentkwik.com ripoff Internet Nationwide

Watch out for people who speak up for this company without identifying themselves as employees or relatives etc, ie, "stooges / ringers / trolls".  I've seen almost identical posts on several forums where they have made comments like "You should just go pitch a tent by the river" etc in response to legitimate complaints about their "service".  First of all they should have identifed themselves as having a relationship with the company, secondly the response was unprofessional and was never wiithdrawn nor condemned by the other posters who also worked for or were related to someone who worked for or owned the company.  I've even seen one where the stooge first denied the poster with a complaint was a customer then later said that as a customer they got their money's worth.  

Since I'm looking for a rental property in the Omaha area I came across several of their listings online, none of them are actually current and all of which point to a web site where I have to pay a substantial fee to view the info.  If I paid that fee then found that there was little or no info provided then I would also be upset.  I will make the choice to avoid what appears to be an overpriced yet unprofessional company which stoops to using trolls to make itself look better in comsumer forums. 

I'm guessing there is a good reason why there have been sixteen complaints filed against them with the BBB.

It is very interesting that Kyle Miller does not show up as ever being a member of our company yet claims to have knowledge that we do not check on availability of our homes? His claims are simply not true, as follows is a list of property numbers each representing one property taken off our list as rented since 1/1/13 if you count it totals 450 properties marked rent up until today. Hopefully they allow this long list to post. If not I printed a list from 1/1/13 to 1/26/13 and it totaled 450 homes taken off our list for that time period.


RENTED PROPERTY

#'S FOR 1/1/13 -> 1/26/13

Our list typically has between 500 to 600 properties listed at any given time so in based on the information above in one month nearly three quarters of our listings changed. Based on this obviously they are being updated both rented and new.

Kyle mentions youre better off using the MLS, really? The MLS is full of for sale homes. He also says to drive around and find homes for rent by owner? Few landlords put signs out now in front of vacant homes, its asking for vandalism. There are often signs for vacant apartments as there are other tenants around, not the case for homes. I own a home and put a sign up years ago. Later I found the home broke into with my tools stolen and the inside trashed.

He also claims that you cant assume the information listed is correct. Well it comes from the landlord so its as correct as it can get.

Kyle knows little about the rentals market and is upset that he has to pay for our service so he has chosen to spew this garbage on the internet. Sure there are always some rented homes on our list but we always
make a diligent effort to keep it as up to date as possible. At the same time adding new homes many of which are not advertised on other sources.
 

Save your money. They don't actively check whether any of their listings are still current, so you'll find many of the properties they list have already been rented. You can't assume the information they have about each house (number of bedrooms and bathrooms) is accurate. You're better off doing MLS searches for rentals, or looking at the web sites of the smaller local realtors. Honestly, if you have a specific area in mind, your time is better spent doing a little driving around and looking for For Rent by Owner properties. Rentkwik is a waste of time and money.

In regards to the person saying to look at Craigs List. Craigs List is nothing but a bunch of scams and fake properties. I used rentkwik after not finding anything good on Craigs List or in the paper and I got a home in Council Bluffs that is working out great for me so $60 well spent. They are an information service and have a lot of homes that I couldnt find on my own and of course they wouldn't give out the information if you hadn't paid because that is what you pay for. If you don't want to pay the fee, find the home on your own and if you cant do that well then you will have to decide which is worse paying $60.00 or not finding a good home. I chose to pay and had good results.

Or people could just look on craigslist and not pay $60 just to look at a house they might not even want. I really don't understand how you guys are in business, your service is useless, or overpriced at the very least. When I called you wouldn't even give me any information, just told me to go online and pay. All I wanted to do was look at a house!

To Melissa,

I am the co-owner of rentkwik.com, and have a few comments about Melissa and her statements. First we are a member of the Better Business Bureau and and our company has one of the best records, with very few complaints. We were put on the 2005-2006 Better Business Bureau Honor Roll for excellence in customer Sevice.
Every home in our list is first obtained by either the landlord contacting us or having one of our employees contact them. We gather as much information on an individual property as possible and refer that information to our customer. So her statement saying that we guess the details on the properties is ridiculous.
We are also not a nation wide service and cover the Omaha & Des Moines metro areas and have local offices. Nationwide services tend to have limited numbers of currently available homes in specific cities.

Yes, many companies don't charge and charge the landlord instead. There listings also contain very few homes in Omaha. Many landlords don't want to pay the high cost of advertising and don't put there add in the paper. Another option is to drive blindly around neighborhoods and hope to find a for rent sign. You will spend much more than $59.00 in gas driving, when our list has many of those homes.

We have over 800 listing on our database most of which are currently available. Melissa states many are rented; of course some are going to get rented, wish we had a crystal ball and could find out at the exact moment the property gets rented. What we can do is call every landlord once a week and verify what they have; this also gets us many new listings, at the same time finding out what is rented. Every landlord upon giving us there listing is told to contact us when they rent there property but some forget, that's why we call.

Melissa also claims that people who use us are just lazy because they don't want to look on there own in the newspaper. Most people start by looking in the newspaper and if they can't find a suitable home then they use us as we have a much larger selection to choose from.
Melissa is simply upset because she didn't want to pay a fee for someone to supply her with information on home rentals that she thought should be free to her. A service is a service if you don't like it, then don't use it. But this is far from a rip off, we have many repeat customers that have used us over the years. This service is not for everyone as there are ads in the paper and stuff on the internet that is free and many times people can find a suitable home by using those methods.

Some people are looking for certain types of homes or are in a situation that makes finding what they want more difficult, we can often help in those situations.

If you have any questions about our company please call (402) 391-1915. My name is Matt and will be happy to explain things further. I will go further and if you are still concerned about using us stop by the office and I will go over our lists and procedures we use to obtain rental information and verify availability. We are located at 2800 W Broadway in Council Bluffs, IA. 51501.

Melissa also said that we told her the reason we charge is because it takes a lot of man power to go out and find these homes. Sure that is part of it, for each employee you have to pay at least minimum wage. But you also need an office, pay huge advertising costs, utilities and other miscellaneous costs, plus we are in this business to make money. Again Melissa is upset because she has to pay a fee.