Anne D.

Jul 28, 2021

Le Bon Vivant Disappointment

First of all let me say the location, views and beach access were all that was promised. It was lovely. And the house had great space for hosting a family vacation. The presence of an elevator to help transport bags to the third floor was great. The community pool about a minute walk away was wonderful. It's obvious the house was once beautiful and luxurious. But it’s tired and has not been well maintained. It’s understandable that the ocean climate presents challenges to house maintenance but it could be kept in better condition. The house was surprisingly dirty even considering that keeping sand under control is very challenging. The baseboards were grimy and dusty throughout the home and floors appeared to have a hasty vacuum effort. Certainly behind lamp tables and under furniture hadn’t seen a cleaning in a while. Food was stuck to the floor under the bar stools. There was a used towel left behind in master bath. The refrigerator was in horrible condition. It was dusty, moldy and the freezer was set so high icicles were formed inside. It just needs to be replaced. I did call the real estate agency and noted that the house wasn’t very clean and they offered to send housekeeping back out. I declined as we did not want our vacation interrupted with a housekeeping crew and we also had a baby in the house with us. Turns out we got an interruption anyway. The previous renters had complained of a lack of air getting to the bedroom on the main floor and we arrived to discover a portable air conditioner present in the room with a large hose out the window, not sealed very well and allowing warm air to enter the home. HVAC repairmen arrived unannounced on Sunday morning at 9:00 a.m. to address the issue. After cutting a hole in the ceiling leading in to that bedroom they decided it was a much larger repair that would require going through the kitchen ceiling. Obviously that couldn’t happen while we were occupying so after an hour they closed up the hole they made, sealed the window better and left. I will say they were polite and did a good job cleaning up after their work. Later on Sunday I called about the fact that we couldn’t lock the outside door to the lower level laundry room so the house couldn’t be secured. Without any instruction I wasn’t aware that it had a three point lock so just turning the deadbolt didn’t work. A simple note attached to the door inside with instructions on how to operate the lock would be helpful to renters. The nice maintenance person that arrived in the afternoon showed me how to use the lock but also noted it was quite sticky. So he decided to lubricate the lock. In the process it fell apart and he determined it actually needed a new lock. As a temporary fix he did something (which required my assistance in holding some bolts on one side while he worked on the other side of the door) that resulted in the securing the door but made it impossible to unlock. Said he would be back Monday to fix. He called me Monday and advised that they had decided it needed a whole new door, which would take days to acquire. So we could not use that door all week to enter/exit the home to the grill and outdoor shower. A few minor irritations: the garage door remotes in the kitchen drawer didn’t work so to close the garage when departing you had to manually use the keypad on the outside of the garage door, the towel service did not include any bathmats, the beach chair service was a nice amenity but the vendor could not be counted on to have the chairs out by 9 as promised. Bottom line, the weekly rent for this home was at a level that our expectations were high for quality and those expectations were not met.