For those of you who need a review, in a nutshell, the location of the Maui Kaanapali Villas is great. The beach is little more than “steps” away but is uncrowded and perfect. The staff at the resort is nice but scared of the host Mariana, owner of Sunbeach Rentals as they have dealt with her crazy ways, way too many times, and the cringe on their faces when her name was mentioned, said it all! The Airbnb itself is also great, as long as you DO NOT have an issue with anything and don’t have to deal with the host, which is near impossible, because she is a control freak who does not care about people who are just trying to have a good experience!
A quick recap of events; A complaint to Sunbeach Rentals about the refrigerator not being cold, caused a chain reaction of events that included rudeness, lies, accusations on an angry phone call, multiple threats to vacate the property, an illegal request by Airbnb for us to leave, stranding two women on an island with no place to go, ONLY to have the owner try to bully us and blackmail us to write her an apology and promise to NOT write a bad review, in order for her not to kick us out! Airbnb promises to help locate a new place for us to stay and refund us for days not spent at the lunatic's property, only to get a message from Airbnb a few hours later, reneging on the promise to refund us. A conversation with Airbnb CONFIRMS the owner has NO RIGHT TO KICK US OUT, THREATEN to KICK US OUT, BLACKMAIL US FOR AN APOLOGY, and ESPECIALLY TO TELL US NOT TO WRITE A BAD REVIEW!
Luckily, we didn’t move out of the property and allow these events to ruin the entire trip that we had already paid for but lost a lot of faith in Airbnb as they too seem to fear this crazy owner posing as a property manager. Best advice for Sunbeach Rentals… GET OUT OF THE BUSINESS... Let someone who cares about people trying to enjoy a hard-earned vacation take care of your property. There were many ways in which this could have been handled differently by all parties, but this was not the way! Oh… forgot to mention below, the shower does not drain and I wouldn’t dare call to get that looked at, so we showered in a pool of water daily.
For those of you that need the entire story as it happened…
My daughter and I came to Maui for a week-long trip that she planned as a gift for a big Birthday. We were so excited for a girl's week. We landed in Maui at 10 am and got to the resort around noon. Although the room was ready, we were not allowed to enter the room until 4 pm which was a bummer and inconvenient but understood as that was stated.
Once we finally entered the Airbnb, the place was nice, spacious, and for the most part clean with the exception of the front closet that had old disgusting carpet in it. We were excited and ready to start our trip. The next day we went to the grocery store and bought a ton of groceries knowing the unit had a full-size refrigerator. When we returned and began to put our groceries away we noticed the refrigerator was not cold but hoped with adding the groceries would help get it cold. Several hours later, we came back to the room to make sandwiches and we could feel that our groceries still were not cold, and we began to worry about our meat and cheese spoiling. We still waited a couple more hours, hoping that the cold would kick in when, my daughter decided to contact Sun Beach Rentals, the host/management company about the situation. Maria or Mariana who she spoke with was frustrated to hear from us and told my daughter that the refrigerator was new, which it was, but we couldn’t understand why it was not getting cold or the food cold. My daughter tried to explain that we purchased a lot of groceries and we were concerned that the food was going to go bad. The bottom line was Sun Beach Rentals did not care and the person on the line was agitated that we were having problems with it. When we returned from dinner that night, we did not have any information as to when or if someone was going to come and take a look at the refrigerator, so my daughter messaged the host again and the host responded promptly asking us to put the groceries in the freezer for now and that she would send maintenance tomorrow. We told the person we spoke with that we had a scheduled excursion in the morning and we didn’t want the repairman in the room until after 2 pm when we were back at the unit.
On our drive back from our excursion (approximately 1:45 pm) we received a call from the Airbnb host Maria/Marianna (Owner of Sun Beach Rentals and of the property). The tone, the rudeness, the anger, the lies, and the accusations which came out of this “person/property manager” put me in anything but an Aloha state of mind! The call started with “your daughter claimed the refrigerator was not working at the unit, I wasted $170 sending maintenance out to check on it. There is nothing wrong with it. All you had to do was put a flashlight on the thermostat and look at it... I sent pictures to you. You made me waste money sending someone out, and you will have to pay for it and then her final accusation, unfortunately, got me unglued. “ “You purchased spoiled food and are claiming it was caused by the refrigerator”! I am sorry, WHAT!!! This lady is CRAZY! I did use very choice words to tell her