Our holiday is over and I would like to use this opportunityto give you feedback about our stay.1. Arrrival- I contacted Patrick few days before arrival as well as on the road.Communication with him is very difficult as he don’t speak one word of English.
I send him text in French, using google translator, about our arrival time. As
I understood it was clear that our arrival time is 3pm. When we arrived, there
was nobody in the house. I sent text to Patrick, didn’t get response. After I
called him I thought he understand we have arrived. Finally he understood and
he and madame who didn’t introduce herself arrived.2. Welcoming- Patrick and madame showed us the villa, garden and the pool. Madame madevery clear she don’t like dogs in the house ( we have 2 small dogs) even it was
agreed we can take our dogs with us. Her behaviour was very arrogant and we
were really surprised about it. But the most surprising thing was to come after
checking the villa more closely. Self catering is self catering, but during
more than 20 years of history of renting villas all over Europe we haven’t seen
anything like this. Normally the owner leaves some basic thing for customers to
use. Hand soap in every bathroom, 1 roll of toilet paper in every toilet, some
dish washing liquid, few dishwasher tablet, some salt and other spices, some
teabags and some coffee. Most of the owners also have some water in a fridge,
ice cubes in a freezer, most of the time also bottle of wine and some regional
products. But there was absolutely nothing available in this house. Not one of
these listed things! I know these are not included in a contract. But these
things almost never are. And still every owner have always had it. When you are
in a hospitality business, you should be hospitable and think of your clients.3. The Villa- Overall this villa is quite nice. On this price category you expecteverything to be in good condition and everything was pretty much as shown on
website photos. Anyway there were few problems: The larger bathroom downstairs
have mould damage in humid conditions. You can easily smell it and the smell of
mould spreads in to a bedroom.A/C in upstairs bedroomdidn’t work. First night was not pleasant as day was hot and leaving windows
open is not an option because of mosquitos. I send message to Patrick in the
morning after and they brought portable aircooler to help while waiting a
serviceman. 2nd night was then sleeping in ok temperature but nextto very loud aircooler. A/C was fixed the next day. Living room sofa is themost cheapskate furniture I have ever seen anywhere before. Even the cheapest
Ikea sofa beats it 100-0. On this price category, furniture like that is not
acceptable. And to make it the more absurd, madame was very nervous about our
dogs damaging her terrible sofa, before and after our stay! Also patio
furniture is as cheapskate as it can be. Patio is nice but the cheapest
possible bad quality plastic furniture makes it a joke. But the best to come:
Madame did wrap dinner table chair seat with plastic film. The same you use for
wrapping food. Very nice indeed to sit on those chairs when it is hot weather.
And on top of this, she is using rubber sheets under cotton sheets on every
bed! And again, it is hot weather there. 4. The Pool- Pool is quite small, but exactly the size that was promised. The qualityof water was fine for 2 days. On day 3 it started to get cloudy. And on day 5
it was really bad. I contacted the owner and they came to check and clean the
pool on Saturday. He told us to take shower before going to pool ( which we of
course did every time. Not the first time we are using pool) And to wait 2 days
before swimming so the weather quality is good again. We waited the whole week
and it didn’t get any better. I am not a pool expert, but on my opinion they
have not changed the water as often as needed. And water filtering system
capacity is not enough for 9 people to swim several times a day with this hot
weather. This pretty much ruined our holiday as playing in the pool with kids
is always the highlight of the holiday.5. The Garden- Garden is nice. Beautiful plants and flowers. Very well taking care ofand it is beautiful to watch it from the patio.6. House manual, Garden Plot- Does not exist. There is 2 printed pages of google translated text,mostly not understandable, but no manual.On these printed pages they writethat clients can pick up vegetables and eggs from garden plot.This was also written on broker’swebsite. Very nice for small kids and they absolutely loved to have fresh eggs
picked from hen house and fried for brekkie few minutes after that. It went
well 1 week but after a week the owner went to garden plot and installed big
locks everywhere blocking us to go there. No explanations why left us quite
amazed.We have enough of money to buyour eggs and veggies from supermarket, it was just nice thing for kids to do.7. The View- Is very nice. Magalas villages seen from the patio over the beautifulgarden is something we will always remember.- But- there is wastewater cleaning plant ( sewage farm) nearby the villa.When wind comes from that direction, it is not possible to eat or watch the
view on a patio. This happened only during last 4 days in the end of week 2 as
weather was changing more windy.8. Neighbourhood- Not as calm and safe as you would think. We left our cars on the streetfor one night and both of them were scratched all over with a key. If you
travel with dogs, it is good to know that there are dogs in every house on this
neighbourhood and some of them are aggressive. Not everyone is keeping gates
closed all time so be careful.9. Departure checkingAfter getting to knowlittle bit about madame already, we were waiting for problems with departure
checking. During our stay we were as carefull as we always are and didn’t
break, damage or harm anything. We never do such things. We are also neat
people, even we have 3 grandkids, we don’t make places dirty. But because of
her, we cleaned everything very carefully before leaving the villa, even the
end cleaning was included in the price.And she didn’t let usdown. We were watching the episode every CSI agent would have been jealous
about. She was checking every small detail of the villa looking for any excuse
to keep the deposit money. She told Patrick to charge us the cost of changing
the pool water because we made it cloudy. Luckily Patrick is a normal person
and didn’t start an argument with us about it. And finally madame gave up and
we got our deposit back full. No thanks or welcome back words from her of
course. Summary:We did save money for ayear for this holiday. We invited our 2 daughters and their families and
sponsored this holiday for them because we love them. We have been doing this
for more than 20 years because we like self catering holidays. We have been renting
villas in Scandinavian countries, Italy, Spain, France and Ireland. During our
more than 20 years of experience of renting villas we have never faced anything
like this. Experiences until now have been very positive and all owners have
been asking us to come back.Needless to say ourexpectations were very high concerning this holiday as we did choose price
category where you can expect everything to be above our everyday life. It is
very hard to understand what we did wrong. We are friendly and happy people, we
make friends everywhere we go and we never behave bad. We are polite and
because of communication problems with these owners, we learned them how to get
application to translate spoken French to other languages so we can talk to
each other and not to stand behind language wall.Arrogant behaviour isnever acceptable and when you get it from the person from whom you are buying
accommodation services, it is rude. If madame is so nervous about people
staying in the house, why are they then renting it out? If they are so worried
about furniture, don’t want to spent money for pool cleaning, worried about
giving few eggs and greens for free, then they should rethink about their
business.Now they are causing badfeelings for many people, during past two weeks for 9 person for example.