Vacation Home Rental Via Internet (warning, long)

**MomK** · 07-19-2009, 11:26 AM

Have you ever rented a vacation residence online? I'm talking about a house, condo, apartment, cabin rented via an internet site such as vrbo.com?

I have had very good luck, until recently, renting this way. It's only slightly more expensive per night than a hotel, with the added advantages of laundry and kitchen facilities, saving on meals which is convenient for a family.

In the past I've rented through a particular site, and had excellent results: clean houses in a safe part of town.

Recently, however, I rented a house and was disappointed. Suffice it to say the house was dirty and the air conditioner did not do a good job cooling the place. Well, we gave it our best shot. With the attitude of: "we're not wimps, we're gonna see this thing through," my family and I decided to "suck it up" and stay. I cleaned the house the best I could and prepared meals that were less than gourmet!

DH suggested going to a hotel, and I said, "no, this will be ok. We'll stick it out"...blah, blah, blah. However, the final straw came when DH turned on the ceiling fan and chunks (I kid you not!) of dust flew off and landed in his plate of spaghetti. NO, that wasn't the final straw...it was when DS thought it would be fun to chase roaches with his shoe in the livingroom.

We decided to leave. After just two nights, we moved our family to a hotel. The property manager was very generous and is refunding our money. I truly don't believe he knew the cleaning service wasn't doing its job.

Will I rent online again? Absolutely! We wouldn't trade those memories for anything...except maybe a clean hotel room!

**jas** · 07-19-2009, 12:35 PM

We have stayed at two houses that were rented from on line. One in Desin Florida, we have actually stayed there twice. And one in North Carolina. Both were great places. One on the beach one in the mountains.

**guest002** · 07-20-2009, 04:59 PM

LOL...memories.

**Michelle** · 07-20-2009, 07:08 PM

I spent a lot of time recently researching homes in Orlando on vrbo.com. We decided to stay at a hotel though to avoid potential headaches like you describe. I would, however, stay at a home based on a friend's recommendation. (the one place that came recommended was booked by the time we were able to commit.)