When looking for an on-the-beach rental, you have thousands of choices along the gulf coast. There is no compelling reason you should chose this property.
Arrival day. We received conflicting information about the check-in time, one source said 3PM, another said 4PM. I called the property manager twice, she did not return either of my calls. Around noon, I called the owner directly. He said we could check-in at 3PM.
We show up at 3PM (after going to the grocery and buying food, including perishables) and find the door is ajar. I knock, and a woman sticks here head out the door. I told her we were checking in. She, without introducing herself or stating her position, said the place won’t be ready until 4PM and closed the door. I knocked again, told her I had talked to the owner not 2 hours before and he said 3PM. She intermediate developed an attitude and told me that she didn’t want to hear any grief about it (!). We told her we would wait until 4PM, but we had perishables that needed to be refrigerated. She said we couldn’t do that since the ‘fridge had not yet been cleaned. So we removed our food. This entire interaction took less than 3 minutes. She then told us that the property wouldn’t be available until 4:30 PM! No explanation for the added 30 minutes, guess we were being punished for wanting to check in on time???
We and our luggage and perishables sat out on the non-beach facing side of the deck and admired the parking lot for 90 minutes. There was nothing else we could do. When 4:30 rolled around she came out, still didn’t identify herself and offered no apology for the 90 minute delay or for her insolent attitude.
In the interim I called the owner again. He explained that she “just must be having a bad day”.
Upon inspecting the place we found that the sliding door from the master bedroom would not lock, the wireless password posted on the ‘fridge was wrong, the dark towels mentioned in the rental agreement (for the ladies to remove their makeup with...otherwise there would be an extra cleaning charge) were not there, there was no reserved parking space, and on and on.
Clearly the owner has no idea what is going on with his property, and the property manager could care less about customer service. I’ve had several customer-facing jobs in my life, and if I had talked to a customer the way she talked to me and my wife I’d been fired the next day.