Things are not always what they seem

Welcome to the "Real World". Well The Real World Rental Company: http://www.realworldrental.co.uk/ in Fulham, London. On a recent visit to London we used http://www.holiday-rentals.co.uk/ which is part of the much larger http://www.homeaway.com/, both of the latter apparently well-known and respected resources for travellers seeking reasonable and decent lodgings in cities throughout the world.

Unfortunately their sites allow individual letting agents such as The Real World Rental Company to use them as a pool to advertise the properties these agents have on their books. The one that caught our attention was this:
http://www.holiday-rentals.co.uk/p86556/calendar which sounded ideal. But of course, you assume that what is being advertised is actually what is on offer.

Items such as "daily maid service", "garden" are dishonest, as neither are provided. "New carpets" in the bedrooms is also a lie. Similarly for "newly renovated and decorated" throughout. These lies are compounded by The Real World Rental Company's "Licence Agreement" which potential clients are required to sign to secure the booking. This too refers to "cleaning of the flat Monday to Friday...between 9.30 am and 3.00 pm. The maids are allocated time to wash up no more than 12 breakfast items only".

The RWRC Licence Agreement also details another dishonest claim: "provision of fresh linen and towels at the start of the Licence Period and one change of linen and towels per week."

Anyway, you have to assume to some degree that what is written is done so in good faith. But our initial inquiry through the Holiday-Rentals website only received a computer-generated acknowledgement, and a confirmation that RWRC would make contact with further details. They didn't of course, which should have been the first clue that this company was incompetent. (If only that was the extent of their failing, but I'm getting ahead of myself...)

So, as I was keen to complete all the pieces of the jigsaw that comprise a holiday, I rang the number on the website for Robin Larkins. He told me that he was in Spain, and could I please ring the office landline. This I tried to do, but there was no answer. So I rang Larkins again, and he assured me that there "should be someone in the office shortly". (It was about 10 am UK time.) I suppose that was clue number two on the incompetence radar.

Sound familiar?