As the local host of our 50-year college reunion, I rented this house for our guests in mid-Oct. Our observation and experience are different from previous reviews; thus, we feel obligated to share them with the community to help VRBO promote fair, up-to-date, balanced, and objective information.
We rented this house for 9 guests for 7 nights. In general, our use of the house turned out to be only 12 hours each day for rest and sleep. For 5 out of 7 days/nights, we had to contact the owner to address a temperature control issue. The house in those nights was either too warm or too cold. When outdoor temperature had a wild swing, typical for mid-Oct. here, our guests had endured similar indoor temperature swing, especially in the 3rd floor attic, due to the house’s subpar insulation. After several nights’ warm and then cold temperature, in the 5th night, our guests decided that it was intolerably cold and asked me to demand the owner to come in to fix the problem. The culprit turned out to be a broken heat thermostat. We believe that the owner’s responses could be more effective (e.g., we were misled to believe that heat was on before the 4th night) and less confrontational (e.g., bringing in a lawyer friend to verify our claims in the coldest 5th night). After the owner verified our claims and identified the problem around mid-night, they found additional blankets for our guests. However, another day passed with no action; the thermostat was fixed on the 7th day. As the result, our guests could not have had good sleep most of the week; this experience casts a tainted mark in our memory of the reunion.
This old charming house also comes with old-fashioned hardware, which made our guests uncomfortable, e.g., there is no shower in the 2nd floor hall bath, while the old tub does not seem clean enough for many guests. Most bothersome is that the owners do not seem to be ready for a full house of guests. Retrospectively, this temperature swing is the inevitable extension of many other signs, such as: 1) a personal ring was left on the night stand, and nearly hundreds of personal pictures and memorabilia were placed throughout the house, 2) all closets and hanging posts were fully occupied to leave little room for our guests, 3) a full dirty laundry basket was in the laundry room, 4) the refrigerator and freezer are 50% full of owner’s food, 5) no window treatment in the 3rd floor attic’s bathroom, 6) no info about the thermostats was provide.
