We booked Golden Goal #3980 in Duck, NC, in the Poteskeet community. We had not been to the OBX prior, but loved the location being walking distance to everything. Resort Realty provides minimal photos of properties, and upon our arrival, we realized why.
First, we paid for early check in. This was $140+ change for the fee and tax, plus a $29.95 processing fee to process the payment. They have a text service that you can register for that will alert you as to when the house is available. We were nearly there when I received a text stating that the unit was ready. I drove to the office and was greeted and given the keys to the unit. As we pulled up, we saw cars in the driveway. My husband got out to see what was going on, and came back to say that it was the owner and a maintenance man doing a repair, and that housekeeping hadn't been there yet and would not be there for another hour. I called the office, where the manager, Fran, apologized and said that he would refund me the early check in fee. I asked if they would alert me when the unit was ready and he said yes. Four hours later, I called the office back to see if our unit was ready. Fran said it was. In the meantime, we had to find something to do with our 2 dogs that we brought with us and we were tired from driving all night from Pittsburgh. There was one restaurant that allowed dogs on their outdoor deck and was very nice but very expensive. Not the kind of place you want to go to in your travel clothes without a shower! But they were very nice to us and even brought our dogs water.
When we walked into the unit on 8/29/15 at about 4:30pm, the 6 bedroom 4.5 bath house with pool and hot tub was dirty. There was dried pizza sauce smeared on the kitchen island, a piece of red candy stuck to the couch, a ring around the tub in one bathroom, dried food on the dining table and coffee table. I called and spoke to Fran again to let him know, and he offered nothing other than to send a cleaning crew over again. We were tired, and just wanted to get showers, but before we did anything else, we ran to the market to get cleaning supplies to clean. I had no confidence that the cleaning crew that had been there would care much to make it any cleaner. We took inventory of the kitchen, and found a skillet with a thick coating of bacon grease in the bottom of it, stacked up in the cabinet. Another mixing bowl had water and a grasshopper in it. You just can't make this stuff up! We were told that those dishes were left by the previous renter. No apologies, no offer to do anything for us, we were just supposed to clean it ourselves.
As if this wasn't enough, the carpets were stained and dirty. We went to run the vaccuum cleaner that we found but it didn't pick up any of the dirt. We wore our shoes in the house all week. When we went to load the dirty dishes into the dishwasher to clean them, the whole dishwasher pulled out from under the counter because it was not mounted! Two screws was apparently too much time and expense for Resort Realty to bother with.
Now for the outside. We noticed cobwebs all over the deck areas and the rafters outside. I went to brush some down, and spiders ran out of them. Fran's explanation was that spiders are really bad this year and no matter how many times you pressure wash, it will still look that way. Funny, because friends of ours were just down there a week prior and didn't have that experience, and most places we went to didn't have cobwebs covering them either. Maybe because they clean and maintain them? That would be my guess. There was a spider in front of the hot tub, I am not exaggerating, that was about 5 inches in diameter. There were two of these in the pool area and two by the front door that I saw. At this point, I requested an exterminator and an outside cleaning, which was never responded to and never happened during my stay. We did not use the pool or hot tub because of this. I don't want spiders crawling in my towels!
So, nearly two weeks after my check in, i called Fran to find out about the status of my early check in refund. He said I would receive a check sometime in the month of September. This was a contradiction to what I was told previously, which is that I would receive a credit back to my card that I used for payment within 3-5 days. I told Fran that I also wanted to receive reimbursement for the processing fee. He at first said he couldn't, but I told him that I should not be out money for a payment for a service that I purchased that they failed to provide. He agreed to that reimbursement. I just received an email stating that I would receive a refund for $140. This is $30 short, and obviously does not include the reimbursement for my payment processing fee.
People, do yourselves a favor and NEVER book your vacation through Resort Realty. They are dishonest, falsely advertised the property and services and do not respond or follow up with requests. read more