| Vacation Rental Complaints [Tag : rentals] |
| 2. |
Refusal to return booking deposit
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We booked a vacation villa in Cozumel called "Casa Ballena" for a week for our wedding. They required a 50% deposit ($1176.00) paid by check. Their contract has no cancellation policy in it. Unfortunately, we had to cancel our wedding. This was on March 15, 2010 and our reservation was for July 20, 2010. This was more than 4 months in advance. 127 days in advance, to be exact. In desperation I tried to negotiate applying part of the $1176 to a 1 bedroom property instead, since the wedding was canceled and no guests would be attending. The owner of the company, Ron White, said that was not possible. He said we will lose our entire $1176 unless they are able to rebook the same exact villa during the same exact week (which happens to be during Cozumel's low season). He also refused to give me the contact information of the property manager or owner, who according to him had control of our money.
I would NOT recommend doing business with this company. There are plenty of other rental companies that operate in Cozumel, do not take a chance with Sherrie and Ron White if there is even the slightest chance of an unforeseen circumstance that could cause you to cancel. It would be understandable to have a small cancellation fee(even though we canceled over 4 months in advance), but absolutely no refund?? Over $1100 for nothing? That is completely unethical.
Date Added: Mar 24, 2010
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| 4. |
Another Keith A. Briggs-owned Evergreen, CO house
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Keith A. Briggs is the owner of this vacation rental - I see he has other complaints on this website on other homes he owns in Omaha,NE and Evergreen, CO. He also took OUR deposit for various untrue accusations - we broke 3 drinking glasses (worth about 50 cents each) and, while we were there, a bowl fell off the wall because the hanger was the wrong size for it and the hanger nail was loose in the wall - we actually did not break it - this bowl might be worth $20 or so (I know my so-called "antiques" values). He accused us of staining the carpet (stains were already there), marking a couch cushion (don't know anything about that - it was probably there too), leaving the hot tub a "cesspool", which was not true (+ his wife had told us that the filter did not work in it), checking in early (no one came into the house until his 4pm time), leaving "spoiled" food in the pantry - not true - actually, the refrigerator was so jammed with jars of peanut butter, jelley, etc. etc. that we virtually had no room for our food, and did not want to use someone else's previously-opened food, so we just took out anything that did not need to be refrigerated and put it in the pantry. We did throw away any of these that had an expired date of several years! (Mr. Briggs seems to think that we are to do all his housework, cleaning, etc. for him.) We also left the house much cleaner than when we found it - tried even to clean the smelly toaster oven, the totally greased-up cooktop filter (to no avail), and the full-of-grease bar-b-que - what a mess.
Mr. Briggs uses all the excuses, and others that are even more ridiculous, to keep deposits. Avoid his listings at all costs, as he is a scam artist, knowing that most people who rent these homes are from out-of-state that will not come back to Colorado just to go to court to get their deposit back.
Something DOES need to be done about his kind!
Date Added: Aug 12, 2010
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