Is Roomster Legit?
If you are looking for a comprehensive Roomster review, you’ve come to the right place. To save you time and potential headache, we investigated the company and tested the Roomster platform to answer the question, is Roomster legit? This is what we’ve learned.
Table of Contents
Is Roomster a legitimate company?
Roomster claims to be the “largest online social network for roommates, with 4 million active listings”. Before we investigated the actual product, we wanted to find out if the company behind Roomster is legit.
According to the Better Business Bureau (BBB), Roomster Corp. is a real company that’s been in business for 14 years. The company began its operation on Sep 27, 2003 and is based in New York City.
They have a real physical address and 44 employees as of October 2021 according to LinkedIn. They are also listed on Crunchbase as a legitimate startup.
So yes, Roomster Corp is a legitimate company.
What’s the Internet saying about Roomster?
We’ve looked at a few popular review sites on the Internet to provide you with the summary of Roomster reviews as of February 2019.
| Review Site | Number of Reviews | Average Ratings |
|---|---|---|
We recommend you visit each website above and read and consider all the reviews if you are thinking to sign up with Roomster. We summarized the most popular Roomster complaints below.
Most common Roomster complaints
Misleading subscription
Roomster offers a 5-day subscription package to let you try their service.
However, if you don’t cancel your initial 5-day subscription, they’ll automatically upgrade your account to the 30-day package.
Even if you decide to cancel the subscription, many customers complained the cancellation process was difficult and you might have to go through a lot of hassle if you try to get a refund after being charged.
Poor customer service
Many customers complained that when they reached out to the customer service (which can only be done via their website), very often they got a reply that seemed to be automatically generated and they couldn’t get through to the real human.
Fake listings and messages
Many reviewers complained that Roomster sent them fake listings just to get them to sign up for a paid service.
They claim they were getting a very large number of messages and most of those messages are most likely generated by bots or Roomster employees.
Also, reviewers claim that most of the profiles on Roomster are not active and have been created by people who signed up for a free account but never upgraded to a paid service.
Craigslist spam
Many customers claim they were told to sign up with Roomster after they posted a listing or replied to a listing on Craigslist.
We also got contacted by a few individuals after responding to a few Craigslist listings and were encouraged by those individuals to sign up with Roomster before we could get more information.
Once we signed up, we never heard back from them. Watch the video below to learn more.
Privacy concerns
Numerous customers complained that when they gave Roomster access to their Facebook profile, their Facebook interests were made visible to others on Roomster and, according to some reviewers, even some of their Facebook posts that were set to private were visible to others.
Be careful when signing up with your Facebook or any other social profile if you are not comfortable with sharing too much personal information.
Signing up with Roomster to verify the negative claims
We went ahead and signed up with Roomster to verify the negative claims and assess the quality of the Roomster platform. Our goal was to find a roommate in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Signing up for a free account
We were surprised to see the Terms of Use pop up on the screen as soon as we signed into our free Roomster account. In their terms of use, Roomster clearly specifies the automatic renewal policy and provides the cancellation instructions as can be seen in the screenshot below.
However, if we didn’t know about the automatic renewal from all the reviews, we’d probably never notice it between the small fonts and, like most people, would probably just accept the terms of use without reading them first.
Roomster emails flooding our inbox
After creating the profile, our email box got flooded with email notifications from Roomster that looked like this.
If we were looking for a place to live, that would definitely get us excited. So we clicked on the “View message” button and were immediately taken to the Roomster’s “upgrade your package” page.
Upgrading to a 5-day paid subscription
We were happy to discover that PayPal was one of the payment options because it would be easy for us to unsubscribe before the 5-day trial period ends. We recommend you always use PayPal when making purchases online because this way you won’t be sharing your credit card number with a company you are buying from.
Notice we were also presented with the terms of use for the second time clearly stating that Roomster will auto-renew our subscription automatically as soon as the initial period ends. As soon as we signed up, we received an email confirmation stating once again that the subscription will renew as soon as our current subscription ends.
So far, we didn’t notice anything inherently scammy about Roomster. We were given a chance to read and accept the terms of use multiple times throughout the payment process, and we were given multiple payment options!
Using Roomster to find a room for rent
To test Roomster, our goal was to find a room for rent. The interface of the site looked very nice, with the appropriate filters, pictures, and descriptions.
On the surface, Roomster looks like a more sophisticated version of Craigslist, with a much more intuitive interface and an interactive map. However, when we replied to 15 different posters asking them if we can view the property, that’s when things got interesting.
Low response rate and scams
We received a very low response rate. Only 4 people got back to us, and 3 of them were obviously trying to scam us. It looks like the majority of the listings on Roomster are either not active or created by people who have unscrupulous intentions. Here’s how a typical reply looked like:
Here’s another example:
Most of the room listings contained a phone or an email address encouraging viewers to contact the poster directly, and most of the messages that we sent via the actual website were never replied to.
Conclusion
We’ve looked at customer reviews and tried Roomster to answer the question: Is Roomster Legit? In our opinion, Roomster is a legitimate company based in New York city with a great idea but poor execution.
The Roomster interface and navigation are absolutely phenomenal compared to a free alternative like Craigslist, but because it is a paid service, most of the listings are either not active or abused by scammers.
Things we liked about Roomster
- Beautiful and easy to use interface with powerful maps and filters
- The terms of use were presented to us multiple times and the subscription receipt clearly stated that our subscription will be upgraded and auto-renewed
- We were able to use PayPal for payment
Things we didn’t like about Roomster
- Most of the listings aren’t active
- Too many scammers using the website without any control by Roomster
- Questionable marketing tactics on Craigslist. While we don’t claim Roomster is involved, our experience suggests there are some people on Craigslist (most likely affiliates) making fake listings in order to promote Roomster.
- Automatic subscription upgrade that most users will not find in the small fonts of the terms of use or the receipt. We wish Roomster made it more clear during the signup process.
- Misleading email messages you get from Roomster bots and not the actual posters. We believe the company does it to encourage a consumer to upgrade to a paid package.
The final words
Based on our experience, we cannot recommend Roomster at the moment but the company is legitimate and does not seem to be engaging in any illegal activities.
Roomster didn’t work for us, but we can’t claim it won’t work for you. If you decide to give Roomster a try, make sure to:
Have you tried Roomster? Please rate and share your experience in the comments below!
I tried Roomster once and had similar experience. I’m glad you are spreading the awareness.
There is a way to cancel on their site.
I cancelled my 5 day trial subscription 2 days before it ended on my cell phone. Only to be billed 3 days after and on the same day, I called to say I didn’t need that subscription and Roomster should cancel it.
This was declined…. It was an easy way to make their money while some websites would cancel and refund if called on the same day of the renewal as its only just then it came through. What a scam!!
The review of Roomster seems accurate. I have been using it for a month as a landlord looking for tenets. I think it is a waste of money to pay for the service. Out of the many hundreds of contacts Roomster sent me, only a small percentage were legitimate and of that not a single one resulted in a tenancy of any kind, short or long term.
At least 25% of the listing for people looking for a place to stay weren’t even looking for a place in my city, many weren’t even in my country and more than a few weren’t even on my continent.
A waste of money.
To whom it may concern. Although I appreciate you clearly stating that Roomster is not a scam, There are some points I would like to make.
1) Roomster does not post anything or spam anyone on Craigslist. We have an affiliate program and affiliates who post on Craigslist are removed. We have stopped allowing new affiliates to join so that we can continue to REMOVE any affiliates who break these rules.
2) Roomster serves millions of people every year, the number of complaints we have is very low. look at UBER, any big box store, airline, hotel, restaurant chain or car rental company. Any high volume business must get some bad reviews, but that’s not to say that we don’t try to satisfy our customers. Most bad reviews are done by customers who never reached out to us at all. As an FYI we have a fully manned 24/7 customer support help desk. 117 BBB reviews in 3 years is not that many when looking at our volume. Most complaints are from people who claimed that they didn’t know anything about the renewal, and from your own review you can see that we are very transparent about this.
3) All listings are removed automatically every four weeks, and every listing has a login date.
4) The “scam emails” you use in your review are conversations that are not our platform, and are from an outside mail client. We can not control what conversations happen outside our platform. As such a large network it is a shame that we are attacked for the wrong doings of foreign scammers, mostly from places like Nigeria, who target our members. We use social logins for account creations as well as email & passwords. It is the large social networks and ISP’s that are not doing enough to stop fake scammer accounts. One can easily create an account on Facebook, then use that social login to create an account on services like Roomster. Facebook does not share the account creation date, so we have no way of knowing if this is a fake account that was created yesterday for the purpose of scamming.
This does not mean that Roomster does not do everything we can to stop scammers from using our platform. We have introduced several features in the last few months to continue to make it harder for them to create accounts on Roomster. Even yesterday we added a “re-capcha” feature on account creation when using an email & password. It’s unfortunate, but as hard as we try, scammers continue to change their tactics.
Roomster is NOT only a Legit company, we are a group of hard working professionals who work to create the best shared housing platform we can, constantly innovating and improving our product. I ask that you adjust your review and publish this letter.
sincerely,
John S. Shriber.
Co-founder & CEO Roomster Corp.
I just posted a room for rent on Craigslist yesterday. AGAIN I received a scam email from Roomster. See below. This happens at least once every time I post. Check the link, it goes right to Roomster, create an account. How on earth is that someone else scamming me? It is YOU. You have fixed NOTHING, YOU are the scammer.
Hey , there ..
Sounds good .Can I see the place ? I’m a 30 year old divorced female looking for a place long term (short term is also okay). I have a great job and I’ve been at my job for 5 years full time. I can afford around $1500 a month. My schedule is 8:30-5:00 Tuesday through Saturday. I’m used to sharing spaces so I’m clean and I pay rent on time just to avoid issues. I don’t have any children or pets. Here is my profile and contact info.. https://goo.gl/gW97Y5
If this sounds good to you , Feel free to call me .
Tnx & Have a nice time !*
Wow, rating your own website is pretty much on the same level as grading your own work, and all your arguments completely ignore the issues your website created.
Questions that would need to be answered/Some opinions toward your own view of your company:
-Claiming that the number of negative experiences is pretty low but the amount of positive ones is even lower. How does that work if you have milions of happy customers? Even if happy people won’t necessarily write a review, with millions of users every year, one would expect that at least 0.1% would leave some sort of positive impression and would therefore outnumber the negative ones by a huge margin. Yet most comments are of negative impressions.
-Removing affiliates after they committed the deed means you do not choose your affiliates responsibly to have that many acting against your wishes. Normally, affiliates would need to be checked prior to allowing them to work under your name. A bad egg here or there is understandable but that many are merely a sign of unprofessional handling of affiliates. Or are affiliates usually handed out to just anyone wishing to be affiliated to your company? I dare say no or other websites would be receiving just as bad reviews.
-Other websites have not nearly as many reported spam and scam cases demanding payment. Sure, you will always find them on any website doing some sort of business but the amount on Roomster is staggering and suggests your employees do not control the listings at all nor check for authenticity.
-The payment issues of cancelled free trials still charging people for money after being cancelled within the required time frame are happening so frequently that you cannot claim they are all made by stupid people not knowing how to read your ToS. Yet you see no fault in your own practices.
-A professional company would take criticism seriously and not rate their own website with top marks while discrediting most negative criticism made against them as though Roomster has no responsibility in any of these cases. Your service is obviously flawed or you wouldn’t find this many negative reviews. A normal company would have a bad review here or there but not to such a degree to warrant that you can give yourself 5 stars in all aspects here. I’ve dealt with other housing services before, too and rarely had to deal with any of these issues. I received spam under your company name, leading to your website, under false claims of having offers for me after never having used your service nor having anything listed in the roommate/housing department.
-Before you request a rating to be adjusted, show actual improvements that the customers notice and it reflects in other reviews, not just your own. There still aren’t many good reviews 2 years later. People have a right to share their experiences so instead of hunting down people’s reviews, how about solving the issues of these people before they felt a need to leave a bad review? You can’t tell us all these people are just out to ruin your reputation. Of a website many didn’t even know of before getting scammed or otherwise encountering issues on your website on top.
The review they made here is more than justified and actually much better than what most people I saw would grant you. Having a legit website means nothing if you associate with tons of terrible affiliates and there are more issues to be found than people would like to deal with.
I also agree that the website seems like a SCAM FOR SURE!!! NO way to speak with h a LIVE HUMAN being!!! Total BS!!!
Take the criticism that seems to be coming from EVERYONE and improve your scummy business. You have time to be a keyboard warrior on some random website that was polite enough in their scathing review, yet no time or effort to fix your dumb ass website. Figure it the hell out.
Your website is a scam, an you have a lot of nerve to actually try to defend it. I just started using the site, and I’ve encountered nothing but scammers. Every single Craigslist ad I replied to, sent me to your site, then dropped me. I don’t believe that people are taking their time to make fake Craigslist adds if they’re not being reimbursed by Roomster for doing it. This has got to be the shittiest way to scam someone, preying on people just trying to find a place to live. So congrats on having the largest roommate finding platform, it’s because you tricked all your users into signing up
Roomster is used by scammers, and Roomster doesn’t do anything about it! I reported a scam to them last 2 days ago, this morning the same ad appears with a different name! They have not even reacted to my report. Stay away from them!
Don’t bother. 99.9% of the listings are scams. Customer Service does nothing except tell users to flag fake profiles, but they just pop up again in minutes like roaches. You have to pay before you even find out all of the listings are fake, so I consider the site itself a scam. They’re in on it.
Roomster charged me $9.99 on Saturday and then another $9.99 on Monday. The week before they did the same. It’s illegal. #ROBBERY
This site is a scam. They don’t allow you to see any messages you receive unless you pay them a minimum of $9.99, and then they start charging your PayPal weekly without any indication that this was a subscription. The profile page in your account will say that your paid service expires on a date and then they will charge you money on that date. Finding the location to cancel this ‘feature’ is difficult. I only knew they were continuing to charge me money because I have PayPal alerts on my phone.
I have received email from people allegedly connected with postings. All of them had American-looking names but NONE of them were grammatical. They read more like they had been written by non-native English speakers. It’s the old story-if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck it IS a duck. Substitute scam for duck.
This site could be a great site. At the moment is a waste of time and money.
JUST A SCAM.
Waste of time I need roommate and they tease you at first with a free trial then they want you to verify with email and social media but you can not reach out to anyone unless you verify your I’d for 15.00 and then it automatically renews.They claim you can do a free service but they make it vague and it refers back to enrolling in the plan .Also keep getting roommates in other cities.
Who gets the money from the roomster’s paid package? If it’s solely or even partially roomster not the said scammers, then roomster is behind all the fishing/redirecting from craiglist to their site. Roomster found a great way to generate money: through craiglist. Because on their own (roomster), they can hardly make money. They just found a way to appear as a legit company but only to hide the scam they are running.
Whenever I talk to an “owner”of the room from craiglist, they reply with ” I am the owner, please register here: *inserts random link which will direct you to roomster* so I can call you and we can set up a viewing”. They are total scammers and make it hard for innocent people to search for a legit roof over their head. I am so mad because it has happened 70% of the times. Roomster is a great idea but the subscription thing annoys me and some aren’t even real listings. This is a total scam. I can’t believe this.
It may not technically be a scam, in terms of what the company itself does. But it’s set up in such a way that the incentives are apparently for affiliates to scam to their hearts’ content. And I expect that Roomster itself is mainly getting revenue from getting people to sign up, so they don’t care.
My own experience: I saw a number of listings on craigslist for cheap rooms in Portland. On following up, I was encourage to look at the listing on Roomster, with a tinyURL link, which took me to Roomster rather than any specific listing.
Whether these affiliates/scammers/whatever actually *had* a Roomster listing which was then removed, or whether they had simply constructed the URL in the email to link to Roomster, I don’t know. But I have to assume they still have some reason to create bogus craigslist ads and then send emails that direct respondents to Roomster.
One other interesting point: if you look at a map of the listings that exist on Roomster, they’re really too evenly geographically distributed. Statistically, they should be more clustered than they are. It looks rather as if some half-clever person decided to programmatically create a bunch of fake listings so that there would be a listing within some some number of miles of any chosen point.
So, yeah. Roomster: not illegal, but I sure don’t think it’s useful either. On the meta level, the company would have to derive its revenues in some other way (ads, commissions on successful rentals, fees from landlords only) in order for the incentives to be lined up with the operations of a more ethical company.
Once I signed up I received over 15 text replies in a few hours. None of them were even listed on roomster and they all had the same line of bullshit. They were unable to meet in person because they were out of town for some lame ass reason but they can send the keys to you. How pathetic are these people? This doesn’t even qualify as a scam. Degenerates with the mentality of a 3 year old!
In my experience with Roomster.com I wasted a little money and a lot of time. I recommend you don’t waste either at Roomster.
No joke. So far everyone I have spoken to from there are scammers wanting a prepaid card. My advice to anyone even thinking about this site is don’t waste your time. If they won’t police it themselves then they deserve to go out of business. As you said…maybe not a waste of money since I doubt too many people are stupid enough to wire money to someone they’ve never met, but it is saturated with people who try to get you to do just that. I haven’t run across a legitimate listing on there yet.
I’m writing multiple reviews so people can read this and save their money and possibly bring these people to justice because many of us want our many back. This is the worst app ever. Not only have I had many people who bought the stupid subscription and wasted so much money monthly tell me they never got any answers back, but this app tricks you into buying the subscription as well and they have a no refund policy that they never tell you unless you ask. The app initially tells you that you only needed to spend $10 for a background check which then you wait a little bit and if it’s approved it then tells you that you need to also spend another monthly amount. This is ridiculous because not only did they lie and stole my money, they won’t give it back because of their no refund policy that they failed to mention at the beginning. Even worse is that this is just like one of those stupid dating app with a bunch of fake people or just people that never use the app because like many people have told me they message 10s and 100s of people and never get an answer after months and months and money wasted. So now the only thing you’ve accomplished is that you got robbed by this app because they’re a bunch of scammers that need to be brought to justice and give all of us our money back.
I wish I’d looked this up before signing up. I have a room I wanted to rent, and like the other posters, thought I was getting messages I couldn’t read on the free account, but it was all spam. The renewal date posted in the email, etc. is the day AFTER they will have charged (yes, they say to cancel before x date, but it’s the date in the email that sticks in your mind to cancel) so I’ve now been charged for a month of the same useless service. Customer service is equally useless. They just keep saying we told you to cancel before x date (when requesting a refund on the actual date, not after using the service for more time). So maybe not technically as scam, but definitely shady.
do not use this website ever. it will scam you through its auto subscription that charges you a higher amount than what was communicated to you
A total waste of time, and loose your hard earned money on top of it! Roomster was notified and they responded with a apology but no resolution as to how you can retrieve your money. I also received a what not to do list after it was already done, and I was also told they were removing the person from the renting list. For some reason whenever you get a response from a potential renter, they are always out of state they are never at the location. I actually went to the location and it was a completely different family, unaware their household information was on a website.
Do not purchase anything without an address or without looking at it. Mostly all are scams! Don’t learn the hard way! Stick to good OLD real estate agents. 🏡
Seems to be more complicated than good OL’ real estate. It’s a click of a button away and can be a click of a scam away as well. I have experienced both. Bottom line, do not act on impulse! Do research!
Even the smartest person in the room can get scammed. Bottom line is that nothing in life is free! Do your research and think before taking action. It’s common sense. Would you buy a car before driving it? No. But people do it. Say the word P A U S E to yourself before making a decision. Count to 10. Always think first.
I got scammed via roomster, so I will never use it again. I feel kind of stupid that I didn’t catch on sooner, and ended up giving this guy lots of money.
I’ve just been scammed by someone on Riomster taking deposits and listing homes they do not own. After they kept asking me to Zelda deposit without giving me their name or meeting with me or allowing me to see the house or the room I drove by the address myself. I knocked on the door and an elderly man came to the door who stated he had been leasing the house for 3 years and was just getting ready to move in a week. The house was vacant the owner lived in Orange County it has no idea that her house is being listed as a rental on roomster. I could have lost $500 deposit.
Ask for money back for poor or no direct service only to be answered by a rep with poor business skills trying to misdirect me by use of trying to use different search systems. They failed. Went on the facebook sies. Apartments dated years ago are posted. Mostly saw apt. In Washington State, N.Y and places on the West coast!
I am so stressed. The worst is they will not refund your money and they have copies of your I.D.
DO NOT USE! Scam to charge your card. . This app and chat response and charges and transparency are ridiculously difficult to navigate. You cannot cancel online. You cannot cancel with chat rep. Chat service reps do NOT answer straightforward questions. My card was charged for ID verification even though I was shown in RED LETTERS my info was “bad info.” !! Back arrow did not indicate I’d be charged $14.99. Then chat rep told me I’d have to pay another $7.95 for 5 days use. Then said they HAVE no 5 days use and I’d need to pay $24.95 for 30 days! There’s NO WAY on website to cancel. “Go to menu.” There’s no menu. Chat rep repeatedly did not answer direct questions and “authorized my account usage” for 5 days!!!! “Download our app.” You’ll get a CHARGE TO DOWNLOAD APP! I am still trying to cancel membership after an hour of screwing around!
dude, your website is a scam and your “business” should be shut down. Have you ever even used your own service? Try making an account and finding a room for yourself.
I don’t know where you’re getting your 4 star reviews, but I bet those are fake too. Do everyone a favor and shut down that mess of a site.
I was talking with a customer service rep on canceling and the dude WOULD NOT simply let me cancel. The slime ball was using every trick in the sleeze book, he even had the sleeze ball new york accent, it was terrible.
Don’t use this site people. Owner should face criminal charges.
Warning!!! Beware of ROOMSTER THEY WILL LIE TO YOU AND CHEAT YOU OUT OF YOUR MONEY!!!
My ad on Zillow to rent a house was hijacked by a poster on Roomster. A lady showed up at my neighbor and said she paid $2,000 to rent a room at my house.
Their New York office at 285 West Broadway suite 320 does not exist. They don’t answer their phone.
You need to log in apparently to send them a message. No way would I trust that.
Shady company.
Shady. I posted an ad on Zillow to rent my house which was hijacked onto Roomster.Lady showed up at my neighbor saying she had rented a room in my house!!
She had been scammed by $2,000.
I attempted to contact them and went to their New York office at 285 West Broadway, Suite 320. It does not exist.
They don’t respond to their phone. Only way to contact them is to log in. No way!!!
Informed by another site that my home was listed on roomster. Never, ever rented out our home. No way to contact roomster directly to rectify this.
I agree with people that have said or experienced using a 3-7 day trial and then suddenly finding themselves charged for a 30 day sub they never signed up for. This is my experience. Just saw a $30 charge on my account and saw that apparently I was supposed to unsubscribe last night instead of today (even though today is the 7th day) and instead of being charged for a week it charged me for a month. I reached out to the customer service peeps and they refused to give me a refund even though it was just posted today and should be easy to refund especially considering I dont need their service anymore. They basically told me it was all my fault (like people dont forget or have lives and shit comes up) and when I messaged further they ignored me. Even if you find a roommate the service is such trash and the customer service team is garbage. So much for “we care about our users” yeah, our money e.e
I have never used Roomster itself but as admin for an online forum I have had to deal with blocking their UNETHICAL (agree to forum rules then break the rules) affiliates who use pass-thru websites to gain clicks, and subsequently removing multiple comment spam & hijacking posts hiding behind these pass-thru website names.
Message from the Massachusetts attorney general’s office.
Apparently roomster paid for a fake positive reviews and charge them for access to listings that often did not exist.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ch7g9IsuiCI/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
I had a similar experience as described in the article. I canceled my ad within the 72 hour legal contract cancellation period. (At this point I only paid for verification $14.95 through my apple account). Roomster refused to cooperate or observe contract law. This was proof to me that they are running a data mining operation in addition to scamming desperate people out of their hard-earned money. They should be facing a huge class action suit and be shut down by the authorities! I had to report my CC stolen just to get my money back. This was a 2 day ordeal. Stay far away from Roomster, if you value your time and peace of mind.
Something wrong with roomster. After posting for a roommate I got many suspicious mails. Also, after some time of inactivity the site blocked my phone. When I contacted, they ask questions but don’t say if it’s fixed or not. No resolution.
Roomster is a scamsite with scammers running it! First of all they were taking more money than they were supposed to every week! Then they have scammers there posting adds for places that don’t exist. Then they wanted a 50$ fee for the room to be seen by me through cash app .
The same scammers are on craigslist too and they stole my identity and used it to open bank account and a direct TV account and I reported them to the FBI and I’ll never trust roomster or craigslist ever again