Tuesday, December 23, 2008

When is a complaint not a complaint?

I'm glad to note that Holiday-Rentals have published the review I wrote for the property we rented in Harcourt Terrace:

Reviews For London Vacation apartment - Property 86556
Holiday Rental Location: World, Europe, United Kingdom, England, London

A 2 Double bedroom patio garden flat in the heart of Chelsea
Rating: 1/5

Beware of this Agent
wefs Bangkok, Thailand.Date Submitted: December 12, 2008 Date of Stay: October 2008
From the beginning to the end (and it's not yet over), our experience with the Agent and his company has been utterly appalling. The inadequacies of the flat, (including inaccurate claims about what is on offer: uncleaned, stained carpets, lightbulbs not working in every room), to the incompetent service, (unreturned phone calls, unanswered emails, late arrival for our check in), pale into insignificance compared to the dealings with the Agent and his staff in trying to have the fully refundable deposit returned 2 months since leaving, and despite assurances given by them a number of times that the monies were to be transferred. I cannot stress enough to future prospective clients - do not rent this property.
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Reviews are the subjective opinions of Holiday-Rentals.co.uk travellers and not of Holiday-Rentals.co.uk Limited.

As they seem to be in some doubt about what constitutes a complaint, please be clear Holiday-Rentals: this IS a complaint. The terms and conditions for writing a review prevent anyone from being more explicit about their rental experience, but even following those to the letter, I think it's obvious to all that this is a bad review. This also highlights the problem of not getting back my deposit from The Real World Rental Company, and Robin Larkins.

Similarly, another review of another property, (the second negative one for the same property), would appear to me to be a "complaint":

Property 93739
2/5
Good if U dont like to shower!
Showerboy australia.Date Submitted: November 02, 2008 Date of Stay: October 2008
A poor start to our stay with the agent leaving us waiting on the street for 45 minutes after arriving late without so much as an apology. Just what we needed after a 13 hour flight! The unit itself is in a great location, noisy though as previously mentioned, but is poorly maintained. The unit was in a state of disrepair on our arrival with the following defects: two broken shower screen doors which were unusable with the only way to shower being to lift and hold each door in place whilst showering. The inner bathroom door handle was broken off and had been placed on the kitchen bench. The front door main lock was also broken and was beside the door handle in the kitchen. The television was unusable on any channel but came good after my husbands rewired and reprogrammed it! The kettle constantly tripped the electrical circuit breaker and we were forced to boil water for coffee on the stove for fear of being electrocuted! For a holiday let apartment there were minimal kitchen implements available (ie. no tea towels, plastic cutlery left by previous renter, no dishwashing liquid etc). As we didnt want to flood the bathroom whilst showering or be held responsible for the doors falling off completely, not to mention the safety of our children, we contacted the agent with our concerns. Someone did come and assess the situation but we were told that maintenance and the owner were already aware of these problems but as the unit is on the market the owner does not want to spend any money on it. The maintenance staff assured us it was a safe neighbourhood and we didnt need that lock and promised to return with a plastic shower curtain and extra towels so that we could shower. These items never turned up. The debacle continued as we tried to organise the return of our security deposit. Despite mulitple phone calls to the agent and his staff we couldnt pin anyone down to confirm the return of the deposit. After 7 phone calls the agent finally confirmed a time but was more interested in his upcoming holiday to eurodisney. Having stayed in numerous letted apartments throughout the world, we were disappointed by the agents incompetence and the fact that the unit continued to be rented out whilst there were known maintenance issues. Either the unit should have been repaired before being rented out or if the owner is unwilling to do this it should be removed from the rental pool.


I'm not clear why Holiday-Rentals think these are not "complaints", and therefore didn't merit investigation when they were written previously. Had they been properly investigated it is possible that many others like myself would not have become further victims of Larkins and The Real World Rental Company's activities.

I'm not clear how serious the complaint has to be for Holiday-Rentals to consider taking action against Larkins, but the reassurance from them that their team leader is "OK" with this company is very worrying indeed.

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