Renting safely

What it does do

• Keeps your address private until you agree to a rental. Listings show a neighbourhood name and a distance — never an address or an exact position. Exact pickup instructions are released to the other party only once a request is accepted.
• Ties reviews to completed rentals. You cannot review someone you never actually rented from, which makes ratings harder to manufacture.
• Keeps a record. Every state change on a rental is logged with who did it and when, and both parties can see the full history.
• Scopes conversations to a rental. A message thread has exactly two participants and cannot be read by anyone else.

Before you hand anything over

• Meet somewhere you are comfortable. You are not obliged to invite anyone into your home, and a driveway or a public car park is a perfectly normal handoff. Prefer public, well-lit places — many police stations offer designated safe-exchange zones in their car parks, and using one is a normal thing to ask for, not an accusation.
• Keep the arranging in the message thread here rather than moving to texts. If anything ever goes wrong, the thread is the record — of what was agreed, and of who said what.
• Photograph the item with both of you present, before and after. It settles almost every dispute about condition before it starts.
• Agree in the message thread what happens if it breaks, and what “returned on time” means. Having it in writing costs nothing.
• For anything valuable, check whether your own home or contents insurance covers lending it out. Most policies have something to say about this.
• Trust your instincts. If a request or an owner feels wrong, decline. You never need a reason.

If something goes wrong

Open a dispute from the rental page — it flags the rental and preserves the record. Then talk to the other party in the thread; most problems are a misunderstanding about timing or condition. For anything involving real loss or a crime, this platform is not a substitute for your local authorities or your insurer.

You can also check what is not allowed and report a listing or a person from their page.

The rules behind this page

This page is advice. The rules are elsewhere: Community Guidelines set out what is expected of both parties when you meet in person, Cancellations covers what happens to the money when something falls through, and the Terms of Service set out who is responsible for what.