What to do when your dream rental turns out to be a vacation nightmare Can you trust guest reviews?
To say that Alan Muskat’s accommodations in Costa Rica were a vacation rental disaster would be an understatement.
“It was horrid,” Muskat says. Mosquitoes buzzed through gaping holes in the screens. Termites infested the kitchen. The roof leaked.
“Worst of all, it had fleas,” he remembers.
Muskat rented the house through Airbnb and paid just $1,200 for the entire month, which seemed almost too good to be true. Turns out, it was.
Vacation rental stays don’t always go as planned. Sometimes, properties don’t match their description. Sometimes, owners neglect to clean — or fumigate — the home. And sometimes, your money’s gone.
But that doesn’t have to happen to you. A little pre-trip research and quick action when something goes wrong can help you avoid a replay of Muskat’s vacation rental disaster. Also, don’t believe everything you read.
How to handle a rental disaster
“So many horror stories begin with properties that oversell themselves,” says Jessica Vozel, who co-founded a company called Guest Hook that helps write property descriptions. “Guests arrive to a reality that’s completely different than they imagined, and the letdown from their daydreams is nearly as crushing as the rental’s actual problems.”
I know what that’s like. I recently rented properties in Salt Lake City and Colorado Springs from Airbnb. They were substandard, at best. In Salt Lake City, the century-old home lacked basic facilities such as a washer and dryer, a reliable Internet connection and essential kitchen utensils. It looked like a college dorm room — not at all what the description promised.
In Colorado Springs, when I checked in, the owner met me in person and insisted that I feed her cat every day, noting that I had “evicted” her from her own home by renting it. The heat worked intermittently, and the Internet connection faded in and out.
Say something now!
Muskat tried negotiating with the owner for several weeks before notifying Airbnb. A site such as Airbnb only allows a limited time to leave a review or file a complaint. “By then I couldn’t even write a bad review,” he says. “The moral of the story is to do like Airbnb says and involve them immediately.”
Don’t wait until the end of your stay to say something — or worse, until you’re home. The owner, rental manager or company through which you booked your rental will have limited options by then. In the end, Airbnb offered Muskat a $522 credit for a future stay.
Let the the property owner know the place isn’t acceptable. A phone call or text message to the owner or manager is a necessary first step. A direct, written appeal to the management company or third-party site such as Airbnb can also help. The sooner, the better. In both of my vacation rental disaster cases, I relied on someone else to research the properties. My mistake. I should have taken the time to review each property listing myself. I should also have gone to Google Maps to view the actual property online.
What about guest reviews? You can’t always trust them. To leave a review, you have to stay in the property. For many of the worst experiences, travelers turn around at the front door, which means they can’t rate the property.
Vacation rental guarantees
Some third-party sites offer guarantees designed to increase your confidence in your rental. For example, Airbnb has a page explaining why you can “trust” its product. HomeAway has a “book with confidence” guarantee and FlipKey has a “payment protection” plan.
But mind the fine print. Consider FlipKey’s protection plan, which offers “extra peace of mind.” But the small print reveals that you can only invoke it if you’re denied access to your rental when you check in or the property is “misrepresented.” It doesn’t apply to the cleanliness of the rental.