Hi Victor, thanks for your input!
While I also agree that it’s annoying that you can’t speak directly to the landlords before booking (although they can relay questions on your behalf), Uniplaces is definitely not a scam. I’ve used it twice for longer stays in Lisbon myself without any issues.
What Uniplaces does is kind of to bring the local rental market online (without the typical markups you see on Airbnb), and it’s the norm to pay a security deposit even when only staying for a couple of months. People are just as capable of thrashing a place in 60 days as they are in a year (or stop paying rent). And a security deposit equal to one month rent is quite reasonable—in many cities the norm is higher, often equal to three months rent.
As for pricing, I always found it to be quite clearly laid out on their site. Here’s a screenshot from a listing I checked now:
I also agree that their service fee is a bit on the high side—especially for shorter stays—but you can reduce it using someone’s referral code. I’ve shared mine above (EDIT: upon checking I realize that’s not even my code—probably just one I found by Googling), as it’s the best available offer that I’m aware of now. I used to share another one, as you can see if you click the edit history:
Unfortunately, that and any other 50% discount code I could find no longer worked.
Actually, when logging in to my Uniplaces account now, I see that they have reduced the referral codes to only give a measly 10% discount on the service fee, so it’s time for me to search for any better codes to share. I also see that a total of two people have used my referral code, earning me a total of €20 in credits. (EDIT: As mentioned above, apparently it’s not even my code, so the two people I referred are probably friends I referred directly.) Not exactly the sums of money that would make me share a product I thought was a scam.
Not sure what fee you were asked to pay here though. I’ve only ever had to pay the rent + service fee + refundable deposit. Anyway, all the fees should be outlined on the listing page, so curious to hear exactly what this fee was for.