Magical Vacation Homes Davenport

Jennygjt

Earning My Ears
Joined
Jul 7, 2019
*******If considering renting from Magical Vacation Homes take the time to read this post***************

Unfortunately the combination of Magic Villas (MV) and Top Villas (TV) has conspired to ruin our trip to Florida, to the extent I will never ever rent a house again.

The overriding inequality with renting from these agents is that they have your money before you arrive - and they know it and as such they have no incentive or inclination to resolve any problems.

Our experience in renting a 9 Bedroom (supposedly) 'Elite' Villa in Reunion (Edited by Admin to remove specific address information.)

Firstly, we had a organised an early check in at 1pm and turned up at 1.30pm to find the code for the lock didn’t work - but the patio doors to the rear were open - so we went in to find the house as the previous tenants had left it - a complete mess!! We phoned MV to ask what was going on, to find someone very unhelpful who said it wasn't their problem and told us to contact TV and we wouldn’t be getting into the property until 4pm. It did transpire TV didn’t communicate the early check in to MV - but unfortunately that didn’t mean MV would have our Villa ready for 4pm. Despite many promises, hanging up on me and then not answering my calls - they told us they had until 4pm to get the place ready and what were we worried about!! Well we had good reason to worry - as the cleaners didn’t up until 3.10pm and we finally got in at 7.20pm. The owner of MV thoughts on this was 'that’s how it would work in Hotel' - no words for that one. They even insinuated we broke into the house!

Unfortunately, this led to rush job on the cleaning and we spent my evening listing the problems with our Villa which were:

• The Air Conditioning didn’t not work upstairs.
• We had no Internet.
• The Fridge was leaking.
• The bed lining was stained
• Oven needed cleaning.
• The Jacuzzi wasn’t working
• The house and pool were dirty and in need of a good clean.
• The ice machine was filthy and could be contaminated.
• The cooking equipment was inadequate for the size of the house.
• There are no trash bags or soap in the house and not even one washing up tablets for the washing machine or dish washer.

All these issues were brought to the attention of both MV and TV, TV were responsive but said it was the role MV to resolve these issue, but they were had a very lack lustre approach to addressing these issues, to put some timescale against their tardiness.

• The Air Conditioning didn’t work upstairs – it took 3 days to fix this and engineer was open about this being broken before we checked in. MV failed to tell us the AC wasn’t working! It took 7 hours for the engineer to replace the coil and we waited in the house for this to be done and still doesn’t work properly.
• We had no Internet – took 3 days to fix this and MV blamed the weather for the outage!
• The Fridge was leaking – still not fixed
• The bed lining was stained – new bedding delivered after 5 days.
• Oven needed cleaning – cleaned after 5 days.
• The Jacuzzi wasn’t working – I paid for pool heat for the Jacuzzi, but was told the Jacuzzi wasn’t really a Jacuzzi, it was a ‘spillover spa’ – what they really meant was the pump wasn’t working so they gave a defective Jacuzzi a new name. But waste of money paying for pool heat.
• The house was dirty and in need of a good clean – token clean after 3 days. Took 3 days to clean pool, so we could swim in it.
• The ice machine was filthy and could be contaminated – still not cleaned and we bought our own ice.
• The cooking equipment was inadequate for the size of the house – items including a kettle, knife block, 2 chopping boards, tea towels were brought after 3 days.
• There are no trash bags or soap in the house and not even one washing up tablets for the washing machine or dish washer – never brought us of these.

In general terms the house was disappointing and wasn’t a true reflection of the pictures, it was tired and dirty and MV put little effort into resolving the problems which resulted in an unpleasant stay in the property.

In terms of their charges...........

Another rip off by Magical Vacation Homes (MVH). When reviewing our charges for an 8 night stay in an 'Elite' Villa - Reunion (Edited by admin to remove specific address information.)

We paid £368.18 (c.$460) for our 'end of stay cleaning' - when we arrived at our villa to find out it wasn't ready, Maryann at MVH told me it would take 2 people 4 hours to clean the house. Working on the basis the average cleaning hourly rate is $12 per hour (source payscale.com) this equates to a total cost of $12 x 2 x 4 = $96 - a fair difference between $96 and $460. To be fair, when I turned up at our Villa 3 hours after it was meant to be ready - there were 3 cleaners which would equate to $144 - still a long way short of the $460. I'm highlighting this fact, not because I begrudge paying for cleaning - but if I'm paying for the cleaning, MVH should use the whole of the of the money to clean the place properly. Which they didn't do in our case (see earlier post) - our cleaning was totally inadequate and we had to get them back in to do a further clean. Therefore, MVH must be profiting from the 'end of stay cleaning' cost by not allocating the full amount to cleaning - which they should/need to do.

We were also charged £209.89 (c.$260) for a 'service fee' - I would love to know why MVH feel they can charge a service fee - when they provide no service of benefit what so ever.

There was a further charge of £1,009.25 ($1260) for 'Tax' - I do appreciate staying is USA does attract taxes, but from my years of experience in staying is the states - there is a sales tax of 6% in Florida which would equate to £407 - where is the rest going? If I'm being charged £1,009.25 ($1260) for 'Tax' - be upfront and transparent on what these relate too.

The pool heat of £293 was a joke, we paid pool heat for the Jacuzzi/spa - but when we arrived at the property, the Jacuzzi temperature was the same as the pool. I queried this to be told the Jacuzzi wasn't a Jacuzzi even though it looked like a Jacuzzi and had a timer switch to turn on the bubbles for a Jacuzzi. We were told it was a 'spill over pool' not a Jacuzzi - biggest load of nonsense. It transpired it wasn't working, the pump was broken - so instead of being upfront about it they thought they would treat me like an idiot and convince me it was not a Jacuzzi!

Also £203.25 for 'accidental damage fee' - which was a waste of money as there is nothing left in the house to damage that hasn't been damaged already!

If booking with MVH, prepare yourself for a shoddy standard of property and service - and be prepared to waste your valuable vacation time in waiting for them to resolve problems.
 
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