I arrived at the house to an overwhelming smell of stale cigarette smoke. The house was supposed to be non-smoking, but it clearly wasn’t.
The smell was a mix of smoke and ammonia and made it very difficult to breathe.
Moreover, the windows in the sun room couldn’t be locked due to a broken latch, and therefore I couldn’t leave my things in the house without risk of someone breaking in.
I never ended up spending the night in the house as it couldn’t be locked and the smell was just awful.
After telling the host about these issues, he at first offered a full refund, but then the next day his wife wrote back saying that they had 3 different people go into the house and they couldn’t smell the smoke over the ammonia… are you kidding me?
First of all, they broke the law by coming into the house on 3 different occasions without notifying the tenant at least 24 hours in advance.
Either you give a refund and then go into the house to see what’s wrong, or you have to abide by the law.
Upon finding out that multiple people were in the house during the period that was supposed to be my stay and tenancy, I called the police to come and make sure nothing was stolen or broken.
These hosts are the kind of people that would try and blame something they or their cleaners did on the renter, so I wanted to protect myself.
The officer walked into the house and stopped short due to the smell. He looked around and sniffed the foul odor, and then turned to me and said, “wow… that’s some kind of smell. Smoke mixed with ammonia.”
I recorded the officer’s visit and even sent the video to the hosts to prove that I wasn’t the only one who thought the house smelled awful, but the hosts still wrote back that they disagreed.
So even though the officer verified the broken window lock and awful smoke smell, they still refused to refund my money.
These hosts broke the law and then decided to keep my money!
VRBO contacted them and told them to refund me for the nights that I didn’t stay (all of them), but the hosts decided to only refund 1/2.
I ended up having to stay at a motel nearby, and spent double on my trip due to the dishonest hosts, Lou and his wife.
DO NOT FALL FOR THEIR SCAM! THE HOUSE IS NOT WHAT THEY PROMISE!
Unless they put, “disgusting, stale smoke smelling home for rent, that can’t be locked and secured” in their listing, then they are lying and misrepresenting the property.
Literally rent any other property than this one.