Mailing a deposit to Hawaii for rental ?

[Steve W]

All these responses to your inquiry are nothing to being responsible for yourself, you might want to use your brain? Trust yourself, not a punatic

[OpenD]

A key reason VRBO and AIRBNB and other vacation rental services have become so successful, so quickly, is that they provide a bit of a safety net for both renter and landlord in case something goes wrong. All the warnings people gave about sending a cash deposit directly were not negativity, but the voices of experience. We've seen a lot of scams of this nature in the past.

A couple of things I don't think anyone mentioned...

By law a landlord cannot collect a deposit of more than one month's rent.

By law a landlord must pay 4.166% General Excise Tax (GET) on receipts from a rental, plus submit an additional 9.25% Transient Accomodations Tax (TAT) on any rental of less than 6 months unless you are seeking permanent residence in Hawai'i and have no other residence. So if it is legit, you normally should have been apprised of the 13.416% of taxes that will be added. For some reason scammers never mention the tax. []

[Guest]

She def got me for the tax ! lol