| Vacation Rental Complaints [Tag : house rental] |
| 1. |
Untrue claims. Important information not provided.
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This house is at 15 Ashleigh Grove Lane, Weaverville, N.C., a suburb of Asheville, N.C. The rental agent and owner is Kimberly Evans of Alpha Real Estate. 1-828-251-9966 (office hours) and 1-828-285-0658 (after hours).
The posting on www.vrbo.com is rental #85620 and contains untrue information and is omits important information.
The material omission concerns failing to disclose that a single lane road leads up to the house from Rheems Creek Road. The Ashleigh Grove Lane road up to the house is a narrow single lane road on a steep grade with a blind curve. There are other houses up the road past the rental house. If you meet another car traveling on this road in the opposite direction, you or the other car must back up all the way and get off the road to allow the other car to pass. This road is not suitable for someone who is uncomfortable driving backwards on a steep grade around a blind curve. The stress that this omission caused destroyed much of the enjoyment of our visit to the Asheville area.
When I discovered this material omission upon arriving I telephoned Evans to complain that I would never have rented this house had she disclosed this information. She laughed at me.
Also, we chose this house over others because the narrative states that the house “is one mile from the Blue Ridge Parkway.” The first time we drove to the Parkway we learned that this is not true. The actual distance to the parkway is nearly five times farther, 4.7 miles to be precise.
The house also is not “15 minutes from downtown Asheville.” It’s more like a half hour drive.
Our rental was for three weeks. When I asked the owner for the name of the local newspaper so I could buy a daily mailed subscription during our stay, she failed to inform us that the house has no mailbox. This caused our paid subscription to be worthless as all the papers were returned by the Post Office as undeliverable.
You can identify the listing for this “New Home with Mountain Views 15 Minutes from Downtown Asheville” (the owner may change the headline after this posting) from others because the listing states it contains a “gourmet kitchen“, a “game room aka The Dog Pound sports a professional pool table, cable internet access, media room w/big flat screen TV & leather sleeper sofa w/recliners.”
This house is very narrow. It’s about the width of a double wide trailer.
I waited several days after I emailed my negative review to the listing sites to see if the owner would correct and modify her listing before posting this review here. She changed nothing.
The listing also appears on www.homeaway.com as rental #p141216. This listing even fails to disclose that the house is in Weaverville, N.C. The headline is “Upscale new home with views just 15 mins from downtown Asheville.”
Here is one suggestion on how to search for a hopefully suitable rental on www.homeaway.com. Homeaway includes a tab for “Reviews”. Negative comments are permitted without the owner’s permission I believe, IF the owner has chosen to allow Reviews at all. If you see a listing on homeaway that does not show a tab for reviews, you can be confident that there are problems the owner does not wish you to know.
VRBO.com offers no such help. All “reviews” there appear only if the owner allows the review and after the owner edits it. Consequently reviews there are useless.
One hint I missed in reading the reviews for this house was that no one had commented about the house itself, only the area. It appears that any possible negative comments, such as the dim and dreary house lighting, the loud noise from cars on Rheems Creek Road down below, the damp basement, the ugly uncomfortable furniture, the lack of even a single DVD for the home theater were edited out.
Date Added: Nov 10, 2009
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| 2. |
Not what it may seem
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In June, 2009, my family and I rented the Turtles Inn on Kiawah Island. We located it on VRBO and it sounded perfect, as it had 6 bdm/6.5baths, just right for our family gathering. Unfortunately, what we found wasn't what was advertised.
Upon our arrival, we found garbage blown all over the front yard and the cans overfilled. on the inside, we noted dead/live roaches and other insects lying,running around. The house had an unpleasant musky odor to it, too. Each of the showers had black mold in them, the floors had not been cleaned and the grill was filthy (and had no propane). In addition, each shower leaked (and had a rolled up towel on the outside to prevent the water from leaking onto the floor, although it didn't work) and one shower door was hanging off by the hinges. All of the soap dispensers were empty and the air conditioner filters were black and overflowing with dirt. The owner advertised a computer and internet access and neither worked. The porches, steps and rocking chairs were in terrible need of painting and a number of pieces of the deck furniture were broken. We also found the mattresses/pillows terribly inferior and uncomfortable. And, one side of the house was missing the fireplace that was advertised.
Upon contacting the owner, he sent over the cleaning service to do its job and sent a handyperson in to repair the shower door and to install some propane, etc, all while we were trying to enjoy our vacation. Of course, he blamed all of the issues on the cleaning service.
At the conclusion of our stay, I asked the owner for a reduction in the weekly rent, but all he agreed to was refunding the cleaning costs of about $300. You may wonder why I waited so long to post this concern. I tried to post it on VRBO but on that sites, owners have the ability to block negative reviews, and the owner did just last. i just came upon this site where I could make my concerns known.
There is nothing luxurious about this property. If you are looking for a place where kids can do whatever they want (cause the place needed to repainted) and you really don't care about the quality of the property, then this is the place for you. The very best thing about the property was its location directly next to the community pool, which was wonderful for the children in our group. It was a hike to the beach, however.
Date Added: Apr 1, 2010
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