THANKSGIVING WEEK IS STILL AVAILABLE! IT'S A GREAT TIME TO VISIT 30A!

We have owned and rented our home for 7 years on VRBO and several other platforms and have nothing but 5 star reviews from our guests. In fact, most of our guests are repeat guests or referrals and many have even become friends. This guest was the absolute worst guest and experience that we have ever had as owners. Situations like this make you want to stop renting out your home altogether. I should have known this guest was a red flag when I emailed them a welcome letter and all of the check-in information and never even got a response. That has never happened with the hundreds of prior guests that we have hosted. They stayed in our house Thanksgiving week and I received texts with issues every single day of their stay except one. All of these messages were responded to and handled within 5 minutes of receiving the texts. We have all of the text messages which show a response within minutes and an apology for any inconvenience. The guest’s insinuation that we didn’t respond and apologize for their issues is a bold faced lie. Our house was inspected by our cleaners and a maintenance supervisor the morning of their arrival. There were no issues with the house prior to their arrival! The night they checked in they complained that a light bulb was blown and they had knocked down a towel rack in the master bathroom. I immediately apologized for the inconvenience and let them know where we kept the extra light bulbs. They asked me how they should handle the towel rack and I asked them to please put it in the cabinet and once again apologized. There are 4 extra towel hooks in the bathroom so didn’t think this was a major issue. Then on Thanksgiving Day they text me to tell me that their kids have locked themselves out of not one but both upstairs bathrooms and how can they get back in. I responded immediately telling them how to use a small screwdriver or similar tool to get back in. This was conveniently omitted from the guest’s review and at the time led me to believe that they had unsupervised kids destroying my home all week. Again, we have all of the text messages that back this up. At this point, I am so ready for this family to leave my home. On the morning of check out, the guest texts me to tell me there is water flowing from the upstairs bath into the ceiling of the master bath. There is no way the water could just be flowing down without either flooding the tub or not having the shower curtain properly closed. This did happen once before when kids used the shower and didn’t tuck in the shower curtain. Since I already know they have kids that have locked themselves out of 2 bathrooms, it stands to reason that the kids have also flooded the bathroom. We had our maintenance guy over the day they checked out and he ran the showers and there were no more leaks. When this happens I am just so glad they are checking out. Next thing I know they are calling me to tell me the blinds have just fallen down in the master bath. There is no way the blinds just fell down! We actually lived in our home for months during covid and had no issues whatsoever and make sure it is thoroughly maintained. At this point, she also chooses to tell me that after sleeping in the master bed for a week she found it uncomfortable. We have a very high end iComfort mattress that always gets rave reviews from our guests. Our cleaners inspect the house with each turn and we have a detailed monthly maintenance inspection. We have also had hundreds of guests and never had any maintenance issues like we experienced with this family. At this point, we are left approximately $400 dollars of damage for the blinds in the master bath. There is no leak, water damage or safety issue in the master bath as implied by the guest. They simply have no idea what they are talking about. This was confirmed in the maintenance inspection post checkout. In 7 years, we have only withheld a guest’s damage deposit one time and they acknowledged the damage their children did. In all honestly, we wanted to be rid of this guest forever and decided not to report the damages to VRBO. This guest, however, did not realize she did not actually pay a damage deposit to VRBO and started harassing me to refund it to her. She sent me very rude text messages telling me I should be ashamed of myself and that I was unethical. All the while, I didn’t have any money to refund her. I hope no other owners will rent to this guest, unless you want the worst guest you have ever experienced and to be left with hundreds of dollars of damage and harassment. This guest has zero respect for other people’s property or their time.