In Reply to: Real estate owner was posted by JenL on Sunday, 23. July 2006 at 08:47 Bali Time:
They were agents for our villa for 10 years. Every so often we were put under extreme pressure from Alasdair Stewart to accept discounted rates.
Finally I made some direct enquiries to guests and found that they were paying full rates. Not content with his 20% Alaidair was skimming an extra US 100 per night.
Over the years he must have ripped us off many thousands of dollars.
When confronted and asked to refund his skimmings on the last 2 bookings he had made he refused saying that we had accepted his price and he was entitled to take whatever he liked.
The fact was that we had an agreement with him that commission was 20%
of the gross, so he was stealing.
The strange thing was that, apart from having no remorse, he expected us to keep dealing with him!!!!
He has lost most of the better villas as the owners catch him out so most of his stuff is as you describe. Overpriced rubbish.