The Blue Bungalow Nightmare:
This is the sort of place that will end up somewhere in a future nightmare, you won’t know it by address and it may look different in your dreams, but the dreaded experience of staying here will stay with you.
If you’re not familiar with Austin we don’t recommend venturing to the east side, off 183 and MLK BLVD, and we couldn’t recommend more strongly staying far away from this house.
When you pull into the neighborhood you pass the corner store where 5 to 10 passive individuals gather, studying every car that enters. As you drive down the street each house is in ill-repair and has a variety of trash decorating their yards.
The house itself is quite decent, clearly remodeled, but what’s a decent house in the middle of a junk yard? Worse yet, what’s a house without a properly functioning dead bolt lock mechanism to keep you and your family safe?
After we checked in and left for the evening, with some obvious safety concerns we didn’t leave anything of value in the house. When we returned, rather ironically, we found OURSELVES to be locked out!
You see, the property owners failed to mention that the handle on the front door lock should remained unlocked while the keypad only opened the keypad lock. Plus, who goes into a hotel room with their key card and expects two ways to be locked out? So we called the owners and proceeded to wait an hour outside in the dark before a locksmith came and let us in. 40 minutes later (that’s an hour and a half later at midnight), the owner calls us back and asks if they need to let us in.
“No, we called a locksmith and they jimmied the door.”
“Oh ok, this has happened before with that front door, send us the receipt for the locksmith and we’ll pay you back.”
So we sent them the receipt -$163 and they refused to pay it, saying we were responsible for paying at least half since we didn’t wait for them to call us back. (After we paid for the room, waited outside in the dark for over an hour? And you say this has happened before? For God’s sake, just post a sign on the door)
Next, the owner proceeded to argue with me via text message at 12am, so I called him and he gave me all the reasons why he wasn’t responsible for the bill. I had to figure he was being short sighted, was a fool, couldn’t think straight, or was just strapped for cash (or maybe all of the above).
It’s clear to us now that sort of person who’s renting this property is not interested in their guests’ experience and safety but instead for making a quick buck and return in their investment. Through selfishness breeds all form of human depravity and destruction. So do not risk repeating our nightmare- save yourself for better experiences...and more fulfilling dreams.