How not to run a holiday home

Come for a relaxed chat about anything at all and meet your fellow rental owners.
User avatar
AngloDutch
Posts: 727
Joined: Fri Jul 11, 2014 10:25 pm
Location: Netherlands

How not to run a holiday home

Post by AngloDutch »

We rented a villa in Spain (on the borders of Castile-La Mancha and Murcia) this year for our summer holiday.

Originally found on ABB, we Googled the photos and came across another site where the owners' email address was mentioned. Contacted them directly and ended up booking a 2-week stay just via email. The rate was less than that quoted via ABB and it saved both of us the booking fees and commission. The Spanish owners were 'Superhosts' on ABB and there were no bad reviews, so thought, perfect. Just what we need - a villa with pool in a secluded location.

When we got there, the husband met us. He only spoke a few words of English and I did my best in Spanish, but it has been a very long time since I sat my Spanish A-level, so communication was very difficult.

Soon we began to understand that he and his wife were going on holiday to the far north of Spain in the next few days, and he told us to contact them via Whatsapp if we had any questions (he said that his wife's English was better).

As it was late, he didn't stay long, but we had their contact details if needed.

We hadn't eaten and had just grabbed some pizzas from a supermarket before we got to the villa. We attempted to light the oven but were unsuccessful. The matches were very short and kept snapping and we couldn't get the oven lit at the bottom, so we just went to sleep without eating anything (not even cold pizza!)

The bedrooms were like a furnace even though the description on ABB had stated that the shade around the house during the day kept the inside of the villa at a pleasant temperature. There were 2 fans between the 4 bedrooms, which doubled as heaters as well. As they did not work at all in producing any breeze, we eventually went out and bought our own fans.

After having had a very rough night, the problems began in earnest on the following day. The drain in the shower was blocked and the water rose and rose across the bathroom floor and ended up seeping into the living room. All the door handles of the bedrooms were loose and came off in your hand. The thought of being trapped in the rooms was not such a major problem when the fact that it was impossible to open the front door from the outside using either of the two sets of keys that he had given us the night before.

We sent a message to the owners and they replied that the husband would come around and see to the problems. It was then that we noticed that the very elderly fridge/freezer was on its last legs. The front of the fridge was too warm - when you turned the temperature down, the back and bottom of the fridge became so cold that it froze all our vegetables solid. The three plastic drawers in the freezer had been so badly smashed that they were taped together. Unfortunately, they were now out of shape and the door did not close properly, meaning that the ice cream that we had bought in the supermarket the night before was now a runny mess.

The husband came around and fixed the problem with the drain. It was obviously a known problem as he went straight to the courtyard and pulled up a drain cover. He gave us a tool to tighten the door handles on the bedroom doors, checked the front door and said that you had to push a button on the inside lock before going out through the door (not sure how that works but anyway...). He told us that they were unable to find any replacements for the drawers in the freezer for this model of fridge, so he was unable to do anything about the fridge/freezer problems.

He then asked me to go with him to the pool pump room and began to explain in very fast Spanish how to go about cleaning the pool, showing me very quickly the different positions on the dial and where the pool vacuum cleaner was located. There was no way I could comprehend it all in technical Spanish, so just said we would contact them if we didn't understand anything.

The husband left a large toolbox behind and said if there are anymore problems, you can fix it yourself. They then left for Galicia. This was the first day of our holiday and we never saw them again.

We ended up going on Youtube and found 'how to service a pool' instructions from someone in Florida. After watching the clip about five times and writing all the steps down, we attempted to carry out the pool maintenance as best we could. We never got the vacuum cleaner working in the pool. I have no idea what we did wrong but it had no suction.

Although the villa is described as sleeping 8 on ABB, it only had four lounge chairs at the pool. Two of these were broken and you could only lie completely flat on them. There were some other chairs. Two of these were also broken and the other iron chairs we did not dare sit on in case they collapsed under us, as their legs had already buckled. There were four of us but I can imagine how frustrating it would be if you had arrived with 8 people and could not even relax at the poolside.

We removed the plastic drawers from the freezer so that we could shut the door, and made sure that we only bought food for that same day, so that we didn't have to store food in the fridge for long.

There was a major ant problem in the kitchen. Sugar ants are to be expected in Spain but the owners had obviously let the problem in the kitchen get out of control. We normally store open food like biscuits and crisps in the microwave when we know there are ants around, but they even found their way into there. The oven too. So, we had to store the food inside a beach cold bag that could be sealed. The owners had sugar in open bags in the cupboards which as you could imagine were teeming with ants.

A wasps' nest outside didn't make it easy to have a meal in peace and the dining table outside became more like a Buddhist temple with incense burning to keep the critters away.

The villa was surrounded by what I can only call a rubbish tip. Tyres, plastic, decaying hosepipes and what originally had been two huge metal basketball goals lay now rusting flat on the ground.

On the day before we were due to leave it was a national holiday in Spain. Unfortunately we were completely unaware of this and of course absolutely everything was closed and we had no food at all in the house. We ended up spotting some freshly-baked baguettes that had just been placed on a shelf at a petrol station. So, our final two meals at the villa were bread and some pieces of Kraft cheese which we had grabbed from the shelf next to the bread.

The villa had the only large trees in the vicinity. Great for shade, but also a popular resting place for pigeons during the day and the many bats during the evening. I have never seen such a mess on a patio.

So, an interesting holiday and one that kept me quite active with looking after the pool and sweeping and washing down the patio every day.

Would we choose a villa on ABB again, just by looking at the photos and going by the reviews? Guests seem to do that for our accommodation and don't seem to have so many problems.

Maybe we were just unlucky! But, just how do these owners get away with this? And, why don't guests leave truthful reviews behind to warn other guests how the place really is?
Last edited by AngloDutch on Wed Sep 25, 2019 6:18 am, edited 2 times in total.
AndrewH
Posts: 1499
Joined: Thu Sep 12, 2013 1:17 pm
Location: Kefalonia, Greece
Contact:

Post by AndrewH »

Sorry to read you had such a terrible holiday with an owner who seemingly didn't give a damn. Is there nowhere you can write an equally terrible review? I don't suppose AB&B because you booked directly, but maybe TripAdvisor.
User avatar
AngloDutch
Posts: 727
Joined: Fri Jul 11, 2014 10:25 pm
Location: Netherlands

Post by AngloDutch »

AndrewH wrote:Sorry to read you had such a terrible holiday with an owner who seemingly didn't give a damn. Is there nowhere you can write an equally terrible review? I don't suppose AB&B because you booked directly, but maybe TripAdvisor.

Thanks, Andrew.

On top of this, I ended up with a blood clot in my leg after the two-day car journey home. I went to the doctor when I got back complaining of a cramping pain in my calf which wouldn't go away. He said not to worry about it and that it didn't look like thrombosis. Well, I ended up in a hospital that same evening with a pulmonary embolism and an irregular heart beat from which I am still recovering.
farley
Posts: 169
Joined: Thu May 29, 2014 11:14 am
Location: Poitou Charentes

Post by farley »

How awful!
Pulmonary Embolism is a very serious condition, so very sorry you’ve had to deal with this on top of a truly dreadful holiday experience.
I agree with Andrew, a review on TripAdvisor is probably the thing to do.
Alternatively find their business on google maps and maybe put a review there.
Have you approached the owners yet re your holiday problems?
Do hope you feel better soon.
zebedee
Posts: 1270
Joined: Fri Sep 12, 2014 2:57 pm
Location: yorkshire dales

Post by zebedee »

Wishing you a very speedy and uneventful recovery Anglodutch.
Take care and please let us know how you get on.
rosebud
Posts: 625
Joined: Wed Mar 14, 2012 5:24 pm
Location: Steyning, West Sussex

Post by rosebud »

Sorry to hear you had such an appalling holiday let experience followed by illness.
Hope you are getting good medical treatment and feeling a lot better.
Do take care and let us know how you are
Jenny
LotBoy47
Posts: 104
Joined: Thu Jan 31, 2019 12:40 pm
Location: SW France

Post by LotBoy47 »

That’s shocking, hope you’re back to full health soon.

We recently had to scramble to get our 7 bed gite ready for a next day arrival from a family who rocked up at the gite they rented only to find it an absolute tip. Dirty, food stains all over the kitchen and the pool was unusable due to green water and “things growing in it”.

The kicker was that the owners had just left after staying there for several weeks. Quite how they thought it was ready for paying quests is beyond me.
SPJ
Posts: 468
Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2015 9:01 am
Location: Aquitaine
Contact:

Post by SPJ »

So sorry to hear about your holiday and health experiences. Hope you have a speedy recovery.
Whilst it is true you cannot post your own review on ABB, could you still get in touch with them and say that the reviews on there are patently fraudulent and this was your own experience?
User avatar
AngloDutch
Posts: 727
Joined: Fri Jul 11, 2014 10:25 pm
Location: Netherlands

Post by AngloDutch »

@all.

Thanks everyone for your concern. I am glad our high season is ending and we are only getting weekend bookings now. If gives us four days to do the changeover which we manage, although there is a limit to what I can do (and for how long), which is very frustrating for me, as I used to do everything on my own, unless we had a same day changeover.

The doctors told me that the clots were in a good place and I am one of the lucky ones. Since last week, I can breathe properly again, which I can't tell you how amazing that feels.

People locally have been wonderful helping us out. Even had a a group of 16-year-olds turned up from my daughter's class when we had a direct changeover last month. 'Sit down, we're doing the cleaning for the next two hours'..amazing how fast it goes when there are suddenly six people cleaning.. :wink: :D
Post Reply