We have a five star rating on other platforms and even with this 1 star review, we still have a 4.5 star rating here. Unfortunately there are people with unrealistic expectations that are quite difficult to work with and despite all of our efforts decide to post defamatory statements in a review. We will do our best to speak to each point in his review, but it is quite obvious that most of his qualms are unfounded, e.g. who has egg bowls at a vacation rental?
They complained it was too cold, but yet they sat at the dining table with the terrace opened right next to them when our property manager arrived to speak with them. Also, the vast majority of flats in southern Spain don’t have heating, so we can’t imagine had they stayed in one of these how they would have managed. We most definitely supplied more than enough towels and bedding to accommodate all guests, but they had new people coming and going and were expecting us to give them more than their booked stay because they didn’t want to do laundry, despite there being a washer on the property. Again, sadly we are not a hotel and cannot be doing this. Mrs. R then even wanted for us to open our supply cabinet for them to have access to. Who asks for something like that? They couldn’t comprehend that we had people arriving right after their stay and we needed bedding and towels available from our supply for the next guests which wouldn’t have left us time to launder our extras and change over the flat. Again, we feel that these people are much more suited for a hotel accommodation.
Yes, Spain has ants and silverfish, you’re surrounded by nature at our flat and if you’re not clean and leave food crumbs on the ground, it will attract ants. We actually arrived about a week after them and in two weeks, we have seen one silverfish and it was at the front door. Again, these harmless bugs are at literally every flat in Spain. In over almost ten years of renting, we’ve never had anyone complain to us about this that I can remember.
As far as his claims for this being a “worn out” apartment, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Of course, gradual wear and tear is to be expected, but it’s simply untrue what they wrote.
His comments were definitely written in an exaggerated tone. The living room sofa is a lounge sofa and while perhaps this is not what they like, for 98% of our clientele that is younger than him, it’s what is preferred. So unfortunately our flat is not a fit for him from that regard, but this couch is not even three years old and with COVID, it’s hardly been used at all. Additionally, the sofa has reclining backs and when they departed, they were in the reclined position, so since he never told us of this issue then we couldn’t help him to fix it.
Also, we’ve had plenty of people sleep on the sofa bed in the third bedroom, this is an untrue statement from them. We removed the sofa from the balcony, so again, this is another attempt of Mr. R to complain because he is set on making things hard for people that have done nothing but tried to accommodate his endless demands.
As far as the kitchen supplies, we were never told of their complaint about the coffee machine, but had they told us it’s quite cheap to replace a coffee maker so not something worth us not fixing for them to keep them satisfied, although it became clear after not long that was impossible to do. Other items they were complaining about were not having a egg bowls, colander (although we have four??) and serving trays. Again, this is a vacation rental, while we have all of the basics and more, it’s impossible to have everything that every guest we have would want from their own home. These items are very cheap in Spain even if we don’t have everything every guest could possibly want. Egg bowls are a good example of something on the list that is a quite specific item we’ve only ever heard asked for by these guests.
Regarding the pool being dirty: Spain was hit twice with a sand storm that had been pushed from Northern Africa right before their arrival. This is totally unheard of and all residential pools had been scrambling to get pool crews to get all the sand sediment cleaned up. This is managed by the residential community managers and it’s completely out of control as owners of a single unit.
This demand was especially ridiculous considering that they had been complaining about feeling cold in the apartment, so why would they want to swim in a cold pool?
The most comical list of complaints in their review was the broken toilet seat, which they actually broke and we had to replace when we arrived.
As far as his complaint regarding the air conditioning unit, that is true and we actually have just spent 3,600€ to have this unit upgraded. We are not making any money on this flat and it’s disheartening when people like Mr. R decide to leave such negative comments when we truly care so much about our place and take such pride in the furnishings and making sure everything is nice for our guests.
In summary, unfortunately these guests were expecting a hotel and a place with daily service and laundry. For all of the things they constantly asked for, we know there’s not a rental that exists, especially at the price they were paying. If things were so bad as they claim them to be, they would have requested to leave and found alternate accommodations rather than staying a month at our flat.
