A group of friends have been left thousands of pounds out of pocket after their dream holiday turned out to be a possible scam.

Alexandria Broad-Surry, 22, from Ingress Park in Greenhithe, had been looking forward to a summer getaway to Ibiza with nine of her pals, and found their ideal villa at homeaway.com

HomeAway advertises properties from around the world on behalf of the owners, who rent them out to holiday makers, and the friends made a booking at a cost of £4,128.80 via BACS transfer.

It was done last Thursday, but two days later the company removed the villa from its site and sent a message to Ms Broad-Surry, saying it “had to deactivate” the listing as “we believe the listing is not legitimate”.

It advised her to stop all conversations with the advertiser, and cancel any potential payments.

But the group lost their money and – having already booked flights – could also lose their holiday.

Ms Broad-Surry said: “We’re so upset that we have lost our money and our much deserved break.

“This holiday was booked after a year of personal tragedy in which our beloved friend died of a brain tumour and gave us a light at the end of a very dark tunnel.

"Now this has happened, this tunnel has just got longer and darker.

“After everything we have been through, it seems we can’t even have a holiday together without something going wrong.

“Can anyone go online and claim to have a villa? It certainly seems that way.”

She admitted the BACS transfer, a payment made directly between bank accounts, was not their ideal method of payment – they had wanted to pay by credit card but the ‘villa owner’ insisted on BACS.

She said they were assured by HomeAway it was safe and the homeowner’s account had been checked.

When Ms Broad-Surry and her friends were made aware of HomeAway’s concerns, they got in touch with the company and were left disappointed by the response.

“HomeAway told us they couldn’t give us any more information on the listing or why they thought it was illegitimate, due to data protection,” she explained.

“My friend has spoken to the fraud team at her bank who are looking into it.

“HomeAway said they would help us find a new villa similar to this one, but that we would have to pay.

"We’re going to have to look for somewhere else because we’ve booked the flights but some of us feel like we don’t want to go any more.”

HomeAway, whose company slogan is ‘secure payments, peace of mind’, said: "Customer satisfaction is a key priority at HomeAway and something we take extremely seriously.

"As soon as we are aware of a situation of potential risk for travellers or owners, we have effective processes in place to protect our travellers and owners. This was also realised immediately after we noticed a risk in this particular case.

"Due to security reasons and to protect our travellers and owners from fraudulent activities, we are unable to provide any further details on these internal company processes."