We were looking forward to this trip after three months of quarantining and working with young kids at home. Going to Rhode Island was a vacation that was years in the making. This seemed like a great, perfect small space for our kids. We overall really enjoyed our time there, which was spent going to the local private beach, Newport and into Massachusetts. The area is beautiful and the seafood available is fresh and delicious. I do want to highlight our experience with the host, Barbara, both during (which was largely pleasant) and after our stay (which turned very strange and negative):
- Was very communicative and gave us a tour. Even let us stay another night for the same rate which we really appreciated--we paid in cash.
- There were personal touches that were awesome--snacks both in the fridge and pantry and even a few games for the kids.
- Continued suggestions of things we could do in the area.
- Barbara asked us for several favors which we accommodated--bringing up sheets from our bedroom closet for her daughter who was coming to stay, asking us to turn on sprinklers in the basement which we then noted upon coming up to street level was leaking down the street. We told her and she asked us to turn them off.
- Two weeks after we returned home, Barbara texted me saying she had to talk to me about the review she was going to leave me. She texted at 845pm at night and then again the next morning. I called her back at noon and, to my complete shock, she started berating me for how much toilet paper our family used (there are four of us and we all use a toilet and were there much of the day for mornings, nap times and early in the evening since out kids go to bed early). Her comment was : "I don't know how you toilet train your children, but I have never seen a family use this much toilet paper in a week." Never in our correspondence with Barbara or in her guidebook did she say we were not allowed to use the toilet paper in the bathroom of the unit we were staying in. Would a hotel ask a guest to replace the toilet paper? She accused us of disrupting her septic tank--which is interesting because we left her house two weeks ago and are just hearing of this. Barbara also suggested that our kids had accidents on her beds because we stripped the sheets and coverings as we believed we were meant to do. Our kids had no accidents while they were there. My husband got on the phone to try to talk to her as we were seriously shocked by both her anger and her account of our stay and she had no interest in hearing our point of view. She was abrasive and spoke over us -- all with our young children listening in the background. After repeatedly calling my husband the wrong name and Barbara saying "Your name is what I call you" and him trying to correct her, she hung up on us.
- Since Barbara already told us on the phone call that she is going to leave us a bad review, we figured we would be as honest as possible. It's a shame that this is the outcome of what was overall an enjoyable trip.