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* One of the benches to the outdoor picnic table was split through. We did not use it for obvious safety reasons. Having to drag kitchen chairs outside in order to be able to eat as a group outside was a huge inconvenience.
* The "downstairs apartment" was a disaster. Not only did we feel that it was seriously misrepresented (detailed below), it was musty and buggy. The dehumidifier which was ru
Finally, we felt that there were some serious misrepresentations in both your online description of the house, and in the conversations that you and I had prior to our decision to rent the house for the week:
* As mentioned, the basement was a disaster. When you and I spoke, I expressed reservations about bedrooms in "a basement." Your response was (which I wrote down at the time to pass on to our friends involved in the rental with us) "It's not so much a basement as a first floor and it also has a separate entrance." Mr. Handler, an underground room with no windows is definitely what I would consider to be a "basement." While furnished comfortably, the downstairs rooms were dark and dank, very musty and extremely buggy. Your response when my husband expressed concerns on the telephone about the mustiness in the basement was to prop open the outside door for a few hours; that resulted in even more bugs, as well as unraked leaves being blown in all over the floor. Having to spray our children with bug spray from head to toe in order for them to go to bed seems more than ridiculous; having to shake all of their clothing, towels and bedding to remove spiders and earwigs before packing to go home is outrageous.
* Also, never did we imagine that the "separate entrance" was the ONLY entrance to that floor. Even an actual basement can usually be accessed from inside the house. That said, if there were only an external entrance, one might expect lights on the path or at the door to facilitate going downstairs in the dark. We necessarily purchased flashlights for the kids just to help them find their way down there to go to bed.
* The upstairs "queen bedroom" (which has a full-size mattress on the bed, by the way) had no fourth wall or door. As my husband described it, "it was like sleeping in the hallway." We had no privacy and were unable to let the teen-agers stay up late upstairs in the living room to watch TV or play video games because of the ope
* We were never sure of the appropriate path to "our beach." There were no clarifying directions at the house and your description on the telephone of using the path "on the left" led us either to your neighbor's gate or a different neighbor's lawn. When we followed the path through the open lawn, we found a beach filled with boats-clearly not a private beach that went with the house. There were several docks there as well (which would have been a better alternative for sitting down at the bay than the small beach next to the wetlands, which was extremely buggy), but we determined them all to belong to other houses.
* Our experience has been that a house intended to "sleep 12" would also provide accommodations to "feed 12." Our intention in renting the house together was to enable us to spend time together and socialize. There was no table or space in the house that would allow us to all eat a meal together. We moved furniture, brought chairs up from the basement and, once again, "jury-rigged" a solution, but it was a huge inconvenience and was a factor, along with the lack of refrigeration, that led to us choosing to eat out much more than we normally would have during our vacation week.
As you might imagine, Mr. Handler, after wading through three pages of complaints and concerns, we were extremely disappointed in our experience in renting your house for our week on Martha's Vineyard. The fact that you were aware of the problem with the dishwasher and didn't inform us in any way, and that we made you aware of the refrigeration issue on Monday and you never contacted us with a repair plan, or at the very least an apology, is truly unacceptable. I have no idea how much experience you may have in renting out your home, but we have rented homes all over the Cape and Islands, New England, Florida, California and even in Europe over the past 25 years and have never had to deal with anything close to the inadequacies, misrepresentations and lack of information (trash pick-up?) that we endured last week.
Our original agreement stipulated that you would return the $500 security deposit we paid upon completion of the rental. Considering the fact that we left the house in much better condition than we found it, we would certainly anticipate the refund of that full amount. I would also respectfully request the refund of the $150 housekeeping fee, since there was no evidence of any housekeeping activities occurring prior to our arrival.
Finally, we strongly believe that you owe us a partial refund of the rent that we paid for the week, in compensation for the groceries we had brought with us (dairy products, luncheon meat, freezer items, fruit and vegetables, leftovers, etc.) that were lost due to inadequate refrigeration and freezer capabilities, the groceries that we had to purchase to replace these items and the i
On behalf of your future tenants, I would urge you to pay immediate attention to these items that I have outlined-there are no families expecting an idyllic Martha's Vineyard vacation experience that would find the current conditions of your home to be acceptable. I also would hope that you would be more forthcoming on the set-up of the house and perhaps target smaller groups or families-the accommodations may be useable for your own family, but groups paying so dearly for the privilege of staying in an island home would expect, and certainly deserve, much more. We were extremely fortunate with the spectacular weather last week-I ca
I look forward to receiving a refund check in the amount of $1,871, as detailed above, from you as soon as possible.
I picked up the phone and called Sloane. "This letter is ridiculous," I told her.
"I know, he's so humiliating."
"I can't believe this woman is only asking for her deposit and a day of the rental fee. Is she retarded?" I asked.
"I don't know, but her friends are probably never going to speak to her again for renting a house like that in the first place. She even mentioned it in the letter. Did you see that part?"
"Yes, I saw that part."
"You know, he tells everyone you're his daughter, and if they don't know who you are, he pulls out your books or tells them what time your show is on and also when it repeats."
"Oh, my God, I didn't even think of that. What a dick."
"Yup."
"Well then, you have to take down the online ads for the property. He can't continue to rent that house."
"I did, Chelsea!"
"Then how did he rent it? He doesn't know how to get online, and even if he did, his fingers are too fat to use a computer."