To avoid being a victim when renting a car, heed the advice of experts.

With the summer season, there is a lot of activity in the ‘rent a car’ sector as in many other sectors. Car rental operators have been warning about the increasing internet fraud recently, advising people not to make payments based on promises such as ‘we will bring the cheap car to your door with a valet service’.Scammers, like in many sectors, copy the websites of corporate car rental companies by making slight changes in the site name through the ‘phishing’ method. Scammers who advertise these copied sites on social media try to trap many citizens who want to rent a car. While car rental via the internet is becoming more common, scammers can also victimize citizens through various methods on the internet.Be cautious of promises like ‘We will send it to your door via valet’Murat Demirkul, a rent a car operator, mentioned the increase in rentals with the summer season, stating, ‘With the arrival of the summer season, there has been an increase in our business. Scammers who take advantage of this increase have reappeared in the market. There are some common techniques used as always. Our citizens need to be a bit more careful about these. For example, they copy the websites of companies, make a few changes in some letters, and even show other companies’ vehicles from here to attract customers in this way. Then they ask for money via WhatsApp, make promises like ‘send us the money, we will send your car to your door for free with a valet service’, but these promises continue until they receive the money. Once they take the money, you can no longer reach those people. We want our citizens not to trust such unknown companies or what we call shady companies, fake websites. We want them to turn to established companies.”There are no cars in the market for around 500 to 600 lira’Murat Demirkul, addressing the precautions that people who will rent a car should take, said, ‘If our citizens take a video when receiving the car from the rent a car and when returning the car, they can compare these videos and we do not think they will have any problems. With the low prices, our citizens can understand that these websites and the people they talk to are not genuine businesses, as the prices are very low. Currently, there are no cars in the market for around 500 to 600 lira. Our customers can also understand from these that the other party is a scammer.”Ensuring that the rented cars are well-maintained is important’Underlining the importance of rented cars being well-maintained for citizens, Demirkul said, ‘It is important for both the person renting the car and the customers that the rented cars are well-maintained. If the person renting the car gets information from the rent a car company about this and sets off, they will not have any problems, and their holidays will not be ruined. Most importantly, the tires of the rented car should be in good condition. In order to prevent fraud and victimization, we expect our authorities to pay more attention to this issue, as internet sites are not something new, fraud cases have become widespread throughout Turkey, we want our law enforcement agencies to focus more on this issue. It is important for measures to be tightened more in this regard.’