Free Rental Ads - More Harm Then Good?

I recently had a vacancy in my rental house in Myrtle Beach, SC and decided to post a "Free" rental ad promoting my property in one of the largest "Free online classifieds" website. I've posted here before and have had good luck and bad. The good being I got lots of leads...the Bad being someone duplicated my ad and posted it for less rent and was trying to get people who responded to his ad to send him money to secure my property. From this lesson I learned never to display your name, nor the full property address on your ad. This way you don't have angry people coming to your property asking for you by name and saying they sent you money but have no keys to the property.

But my recent posting for my Myrtle Beach property really took me for a loop. No name displayed on ad and I only put the street name...no house number. Close enough so they could get a feel for the neighborhood if any prospects did a drive-by. And of course attached lots of pictures to the ad...cause prospect like to see pictures.

Then one day I got an email from a prospect. I called her and we talked and I told her the rent was $995 as stated on the ad and tenant pays all utilities. She followed up with an angry tone stating my ad was being advertised for $700 and all utilities are paid by owner.

I told her this must be a different ad, but sure enough there was an ad just like mine, same title, same pictures, same content except the rent was like she said.

But, what was really weird was the full house address was on this ad. How could this be? I never put the full address on my ad.....who could possibly have known this? I contemplated this for awhile, got angry at why this was happening to me and wondering if this happens to everybody else?

Then I took a closer look at the fake ad and something caught my eye. There was an email address given if you wished to reply to the ad.

Something looked familiar...I recognized that name...where have I seen that name before...O My God! That's my previous tenant! What on earth is he thinking? He moved out a month ago due to job relocation. Was a fine tenant while he was there, paid on time. I didn't throw him out. What was his problem?

Okay so I had to deduct part of his security deposit for some damages. That's normally what you do...tenant does the damage...tenant pays for damages.

I'd thought I'd seen it all, but that one, I wasn't ready for. My own tenant trying to get even would go out of his way to find my ad, duplicate it and steer potential tenants away. Unfortunately it's easy to do, cost you no money because it's Free and you can be anonymous (as long as you don't use your full name as your email address).

So now I ponder the pros and cons of free rental ad sites and wonder am I doing more harm than good. I haven't come to a conclusion yet. I do like Free, but I believe it may come with a price.