Nice view, but we got ripped off!!
Review Submitted: February 27, 2011
Date of Stay: February 2011
Let me just list our experiences...
The housekeeper and her friends are in the house from morning until late afternoon every single day you are there, which kind of defeats the purpose of renting a private house. on more than one occation they walked into the bathroom while someone was on the toilet. Not cool. Also, bring lots of bug spray, because all day while the housekeepers are there, they shut off the Air Conditioning and if you turn it back on she will shut it off again, it becomes a battle of wills (I'm assuming it's under the owners direction to save on electricity), and she more than once left the back doors literally wide open filling the rooms with bugs and flying insects, leaving most of our guests with nasty bug bites.
The local who is a pool cleaner/maintenance man is there every single morning, and on one night he and a friend showed up at 10pm, drunk, used his own set of personal keys to come into the house uninvited, to ask if one of our group who was just being friendly to him that morning would like to go out drinking with him. It was very unsettling, scary and made the majority of our group extremely upset, we had children with us.
Dont be fooled by how nice the guy you speak to when inquiring about renting the villa, they kept our deposit stating ficticious reasons, it is obviously a scam they have set up. For me to go after them legally, it appears i would have to go litigate in Costa Rica, even though you send your money and deal with a man in Chicago. I should have read the contract closer I guess.
Costa Rica is such a beautiful place, especially Manuel Antonio, but I suggest you find a different house, and management company.
Owner's Response: This is a very simple and unfortunate case. This group LOVED the house. They actually told us that they had already recommended our home to their friends. Unfortunately, this group has become vindictive because they lost their security deposit for two reasons:
1) There were damages to one of our locally hand-crafted headboards. We have sent them photos of the damages (a cracked headboard and broken 'spindle') to which their response was 'we didn't do it... ' and later suggested we 'just glue it'.
2) The group also had several extra guests stay in the home above our contracted number. They denied the extra guests (even though the maid was told by one of the guests that there were 16 in the home instead of the 12 contracted). However, they could not explain why they hired and paid our chef to prepare a meal for the 4 extra guests.
We know that some damage will occur in a home... that's an expense of running a rental home. Until this group, we have NEVER held an entire security deposit from any of over 5,000 guests that we have hosted in our homes and have only held back partial deposits on a total of three guests with their consent. In fact, this group rented 2 homes from us, and they received their full security deposit back for the second house a very quick five days of their departure.
Unfortunately, now that this group lost their security deposit for the first house, they have gone from 'recommending the home to friends' as stated in their first e-mail to us, to fabricating these outrageous stories about their stay strictly to hurt our reputation.
We hope, and invite anyone looking at our home to review the many YEARS of positive, glowing reviews before believing what this one person has posted here.
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