To begin with the positive things: the house is nice, as is the pool. Everything is modern, beds are good.
However, the negative experience started even before our arrival, when the handling agency postponed our meeting to handover the keys. Renata, the representative of the handling agency, gave us some rudimentary explanations, but couldn’t answer basic questions like how to clean the pool etc. She didn’t have the key to the laundry room with her, so she went home and came back later on the day. We had rented towels and bed sheets (yes, they aren’t included) and were unpleasantly surprised that the rented towels didn’t even include a larger pool towel, which had to be rented separately (quite a rip off, honestly).
Given that we paid nearly €3000 for a week, we were also really surprised to find out that there wasn’t even a bottle of water or a single roll of toilet paper in the house, something that we are not really used to when renting properties like these through Airbnb. There also wasn’t a decent knife to cut a tomato, so we bought one, same for a lighter, olive oil, pepper, very basic things that you normally find in houses of this category.
On Sunday morning, our first day, we were woken up by a man mowing the lawn in front of the house, leaving the cut grass all over the terrace and also inside of the pool. The pool lights and the pump didn’t work, so I contacted the agency, only to be told that some technician would arrive. It never happened. Only after the pool water started running over, I contacted them again and the next morning three people showed up to fix the pool. The very gracious owners joined them and gave us a bottle of wine as an apology, which we really appreciated.
Regardless, Renata didn’t change her attitude. For the handover, she showed up late again. Then she “graciously” told us that the broken pool “wasn’t our fault” and we wouldn’t be charged for it (a joke, really, as we should have reclaimed money for two days of a broken pool).
Renata had told us at check-in to put trash out in front of the front gate of the house, where it was supposed to be picked up on certain days, which never happened (obviously something quite usual as the trash of the renters before us was still there when we arrived). Upon check-out, we were stuck with our bags of trash. Instead of taking care of it, Renata made us take the trash with us on our trip to the airport and sent us some address of a deposit site somewhere on the outskirts of the next town. Crazy.
In essence: the area is beautiful, as are the house and its surroundings. The management, however, is really substandard, to say the least. So, while we will surely return to Puglia, it won’t be to this house, unfortunately.