Be cautious who you rent your villa from!!

[jovi]

Hi, I joined this site last June, after returning from my trip to Florida, 23rd May - 7th June. I did write some sort of report then, but didn't know how to post photos!! Anyway, to cut a long story short, I booked my Holiday over the net, Unitours to be presise!! We were messed around so much, we were booked to go to Windsor Palms, then 3 weeks before were told villa had been wrecked and were being realocated to Linfields!! We didn't mind too much, we had been on Lindfields before, our flights were changed too, from Virgin, direct flight to Delta indirect flight!! We had no details on villa, we were told they don't get allocated until the day before! (how did they know our villa on Windsor palms was trashed, 3 weeks before we were due to fly?) anyway we got there late on the Sun night to this,













































We were furious!! All the questions we had asked regarding the villa were fobbed off or not replied to, we took photos, we had been to florida before with my inlaws (who had always paid) and decided we would treat them this time round, we were horrified at our luxury villa, which we were paying £400 a week for, my eldest son refused to sleep on bed so tryed going to sleep in his clothes standing up!! he had to sleep on top of bed. We got it sorted next day and were moved to a villa just up from this one, we had a great holiday in the end, we did notice work being carried out on the villa while we were there, I love this site and wish I had found it before our hol last year, in future I know where I will be booking my holiday, so word of warning, always try and get as much info from whoever you book your hol with before you book anything!! Hope I didn't go on too much, as I said I did vent my anger last June on this site but had no photos to show for it, so here they are.

[Linicia]

How dreadful. Just goes to show that not booking direct with the owner can mean a whole heap of trouble. Book with the owner and see what you gte beforehand.
Paying £400 a week through an agency means that he owners would get a very small portion of the rental which would hardly cover their taxes, cleaning fee, utility costs etc. Obviously nothing left over for maintenance and upgrades and spring clean. Buyers beware, book from an owner from this site and get something nice.

[DisneyDreamer]

That's horrendous, I am so glad you were moved. Even if you go for the cheapest available holiday option there is no excuse for it not to be clean!!!

I would have run a mile from the bugs!

[msnsad]

[lizmcg100]

That is disgusting to say the least![msnoo][msnoo]

And we questioned our MC when they had forgot to stock up on the loo-rolls for our last visit[msnwink]

Thank goodness thats all we had to worry about!

[Magical Dreams]

The cost of anyone's holiday should not determine how clean your accommodation is.

I hope that these photo's have been sent to the tour operator.

It looks like it was not even used for rentals.

The state of it, it had been like that for months.
I would never be able to show my face again if that was my villa!

To be honest, I would have not let my family stay there one night.
I would have found an hotel first then sorted it out the next day!

Glad it all turned out ok in the end.
[msnsmile2]

[Magical Dreams]

I am sure that if it was an owner from one of these sites, John and Roger would not hesitate to ban them until it was sorted out.



The management company should not be operating if this is their standard!

[Carla]

This is one of the big problems of renting a home from a tour operator. You just never know what you are going to end up with. You might be lucky but then again you might not. I'm so sorry that you had this experience Jovi.

Unfortunately, when holiday makers use tour operators for booking a villa and get the same experience they sometimes assume that most homes look disgusting, like that one did, and they tar us all with the same brush, or if they got lucky then they sometimes assume that those of us charging fair and equitable rates for our homes are ripping them off, when nothing could be further from the truth.

I don't know any villa owners, who love and care for their homes, who would ever take tour operator bookings. The GB£400 rental income that you paid is not enough money per week, for any size home, to keep it well up to scratch, do general maintenance and to allow for improvements and replacement/new items, without the owners having to dig deep into their own pockets all the time. As Linicia mentioned this owner probably only got around GB£250 of what you paid, as the rest would have gone towards tour operator commission and management company commission, therefore homes used by tour operators frequently go to seed rapidly because the owners can't afford any kind of upkeep. A brand new home in the hands of tour operator bookings will most likely look like the one you had within 6 months, if not less, particularly if the bookings are back to back.

If it were within my power to do so, I would ban tour operators from renting villas to their guests. Tour operators do nothing but harm to the Florida villa industry.

[steph_goodrum]

You forgot as well Carla that out of that £400 approx 13% (£52) would be due on Sales and tourist tax. Even an owner taking the booking direct and cutting out the tour agents commission would have a job to keep the villa up to any reasonable standard with what was left by the time utilities, cleaning and general overheads were taken out.

[luckylady]

That's disgusting
Can you imagine seeing the villa for the first time
At the start of your holiday.
If I thought my villa looked like that I would be catching
The next plane over there
Does these tour operators not check these villa out
How do they get away with this?
Barbara

[chris c]

Those pictures are appalling! Some of them made me feel quite queasy.
What a dreadful start to anyone's holiday.
Sadly though, your story is by no means unique. On our last visit over to Florida, I met a family at the airport and they had a very similar experience with the villa that they had rented, again through a tour company.
As has already been said, the best way is to book directly with the owner.