Where do we begin?
Let us start by stating the fact that we are corporate rental property owners ourselves, so maybe our expectations are just beyond most people’s but if that is the case, then I am sad for most people. We would like to hope that our circumstances were an anomaly of sorts and not standard practice for this family, as they own several other properties in the San Diego area. However, after reaching out on numerous issues that were not adequately resolved, we are sharing the timeline of events to better inform future tenants of what they may encounter with this company/property owner. For those not interested in the long version (TLDR), the summary is buyer beware! They misrepresent themselves in their profile, essentials are not guaranteed, and your refund is not willingly returned when you have to vacate due to their lack of response!
Timeline:
We contacted the owners the day before arrival (July 1st) to inquire about the coffee equipment so we could arrive prepared. We arrived a little early to get a feel for the neighborhood and encountered a gentleman that lived there who informed us that we would need to contact the owners for the code, which we did at 2:56 pm. Check in was at 4:00. Nothing until 4:40 when my husband was standing in front of their house and ran into the owner as she was pulling out of her driveway to go to the doctor. This was at 4:40 pm. The property owner’s profile stated that they were home and available for issues (which I made known the importance of this to the owners before any further issues arrived) so I was confused and concerned when they took an unexpectedly long time to respond. After all, they knew we were coming and apparently…they were home!
The following morning, July 2nd, after pouring a bag whole coffee beans into their machine (there were no coffee beans available on site as the listing states), we unsuccessfully attempted to make coffee. After contacting one owner to resolve the issue, she instructed me to contact her husband for help, which we did and left a message in reference to our issue and requested a return call, which we never got. We still had not heard back on the morning of the 4th, so we reached out again and left another unreturned voicemail. We reached out to the wife again who informed us that they were traveling for vacation and that she would “be happy to reimburse us for coffee if you’d like to go buy some and sorry for the inconvenience!”.
Moving on to the evening of the 3rd. While watching tv and relaxing, the internet goes out. No internet, no tv, as this property DOES NOT have cable. We reached out to the husband at 6:51 pm and left another unreturned message. We also reached out to the wife at 8:23 pm. No answer. We did not leave a message.
HAPPY 4TH OF JULY
We woke up to no internet and no missed calls or voicemails, so we called again at 8:32 am and left another message. After not hearing from anyone all day, we reached out to the husband again concerning the internet. We spoke to him at 4:43 when he stated he was going to have it reset. At 5:01 we left the following message: “the router was going to need reset. Unfortunately. It is kind of a concern because we work from home, so having stable internet may force us to leave early and make other accommodations. I am sorry to dump this on you over a holiday weekend. But I fly out on Tuesday for work, my wife will lose it if the internet isn’t working correctly during the week. Something neither of us will want to deal with. Are there solutions you can forward.”
5:28 pm from husband
“Hi, usually the internet in the house is very stable..we pay for 1000 mb per second. Superfast. Is this the first time you have had trouble with it? Maybe because today is a holiday?? I am sending someone to reset the internet for you guys in the house.”
8:10 pm we replied
“Thanks so much. I am sure that will fix it”
7:00 pm from husband
“Hi guys, how’s the internet now. We reset it.”
7:07 pm we replied
“Not working”
7:09 pm from husband
“Sorry. Let me keep looking into it. The internet usually works great in our house.”
Morning of July 5th. Still no internet/tv. We contacted the husband at 11:13 am to explain in a voicemail that we will be checking out early due to the nature of our business relying on the internet and pointed out the fact that they were not on site to handle issues in a timely manner. This time the husband immediately called back ONE MINUTE LATER to inform us that we would need to contact his wife to handle the cancellation. We left a message at 11:18.
At 12:11, we got this message in the app.
“We hope you’ll be able to stay at our tiny house given it looks like we just got the internet fixed. Sorry that it wasn’t working on the 4th, it should not only be working here now, but also probably wasn’t working due to the crazy busy use on a holiday which is reassuring that you likely wouldn’t be working on a holiday and we have never had an internet complaint at this location so it’s reputation is that it is a reliable connection. Also, being that the holiday is over we are able to get our on call manager over faster to fix anything if something else goes wrong in the future!”
We replied:
“Thanks so much for getting it addressed but we could not take the risk of it not being operational while Shana is working. We were already packed and loaded up and washing the dishes per the agreement to leave when someone