When James Storie and his family checked into a Vacasa vacation rental in Florida’s Panhandle, he was stunned by the condition of the home.
“There was mold, urine, and cockroaches in the rental,” he says.
Now he wants a refund for the filthy home from his vacation rental site. But is it too late?
Storie’s story is not so much about the current state of the vacation rental business, with everyone trying to make a quick buck in an age of Airbnb. It’s about being a smart consumer — selecting the right rental and filing the right complaint at the right time.
Let’s answer the following questions:
- What is Vacasa Premium Clean?
- What happened to this vacation rental?
- How do you get a refund from Vacasa?
But first, let’s visit the house with mold, urine and cockroaches.
“We killed roaches in the kitchen every day of our stay”
Storie had paid $10,871 to spend a week in what was billed as a five-bedroom mansion that offered “unparalleled luxury.”
The house seemed like a dream:
The first floor welcomes you with open-concept living, dining, and kitchen areas, alongside a spacious master suite. The gourmet kitchen is perfect for culinary gatherings, and the private gas grill in the backyard is ideal for alfresco dining after a day at the beach.
The second floor features three beautifully appointed bedrooms. One room has bunk beds, another has a queen bed, and they share a Jack-and-Jill bathroom. The third bedroom is a second master suite with a king bed and en suite bathroom.
You get the idea.
Storie imagined his family spending long days at the beach, enjoying each other’s company. But then he checked into the rental. He found the couches and curtains were stained and dirty. Paint was peeling off the front porch. Dark fingerprints covered the front door.
Then they found the cockroaches in their vacation rental.
“We killed roaches in the kitchen every day of our stay,” he says. “We also killed roaches in the bathrooms and living area.” (Related: New strategies for avoiding vacation rental “gotchas”.)
The sinks and bathtubs were disgusting, too.
And there was mold.
“My daughter took a bath in the master bath and mold was sprayed all over her from the jacuzzi jets. She’s been coughing since the trip,” he says.
Storie also found mold on the shower curtains. (Related: Vacation rental warning words: don’t book if you see this!)
But the worst part was the smell.
“My son said, ‘Dad, my bed smells like pee.’ I found that one of the pillows on the third-floor bunk bed was covered in urine so I pulled some bedding and a mattress from another floor for him to sleep on the rest of the week,” he says.
Now, Vacasa has gone quiet
Still, the Stories stayed in the rental and tried to address each of these problems with Vacasa, the platform through which they had rented the house.
“I sent pictures of the mold, stained furniture, peeling paint, and roaches,” he says. “Vacasa’s relocation team didn’t have any other properties for us to move to since it was a holiday week. They sent a cleaner out two days later to clean up the mold and throw away the urine-stained pillow.” (Related: I lost $6,074 after Booking.com canceled my vacation rental. Can you get it back for me?)
Storie asked for compensation for his nightmare stay. In response, he says Vacasa was dismissive and ultimately unresponsive. A representative told him the insects were just “palmetto bugs” and not cockroaches, even though they are the same thing. And then Vacasa went silent.
But hang on. Does Vacasa guarantee its homes will be clean and insect-free? Actually, yes.
What is Vacasa Premium Clean?
Vacasa has minimum cleaning guidelines, introduced during the pandemic, that meet or exceed CDC cleaning recommendations and align with guidance from hospitality industry experts.
The program is called Vacasa Premium Clean:
- Before every guest arrives, Vacasa systematically cleans, resets, and checks for safety equipment and functioning amenities.
- The company also promises to treat hard and soft surfaces throughout the home with a hospital-grade, EPA-approved disinfectant.
- Housekeeping staff turns on fans, opens windows, uses high-temperature wash and dry cycles, and puts on fresh gloves for bedding changes.
- Cleaners pay special attention to high-touch surfaces such as doorknobs, lockboxes, elevators, stairs, phones, and toys.
- Each rental includes starter amenities such as cleaning supplies, paper products, toiletries, and additional stock of basic household items.
Bottom line: The Vacasa Premium Clean program guarantees each of its homes will be squeaky clean.
So what went wrong?
Cockroaches in your vacation rental: What happened here?
No question about it, Storie checked into a nightmare vacation rental. A more thorough review of the property shows that the owners were trying to sell the property at the same time, so chances are they were just “phoning it in” until they found a buyer.
But Storie made a series of mistakes, which became clear when my team reviewed his paper trail with Vacasa.
- He didn’t conduct a full inspection of the property when he arrived. Instead, he discovered the various problems over several days — the insects, the mold, the urine-soaked pillow. Always conduct a top-to-bottom walk-through of your vacation rental, and take “before” pictures, as soon as you arrive.
- In many of the messages between Storie and Vacasa, he focused on asking for compensation for the problems. Asking a vacation rental manager for compensation is tricky. Of course, they don’t want to give you any money back, but they also don’t appreciate the narrative that somehow they’ve “wronged” a guest. You are always better off asking them to fix the problem instead of giving you a refund.
- It’s clear after reviewing the case that Storie was in a vacation rental that should never have been in Vacasa’s inventory. When you arrive in a nightmare rental and realize that you’re in a dirty or unsafe home, you have to cut your losses and leave. And that’s even true during a holiday week. Leave, find a hotel, or just drive back home.
Storie shouldn’t have stayed in the rental. If you stay in a vacation rental, getting a refund is much more difficult.
How do you get a refund from Vacasa?
The steps to a refund of your Vacasa rental are simple.
Document the problem
Make sure you have plenty of photos and videos, especially if you have cockroaches in your vacation rental. Simply writing it in an email or text message is not enough. (Here’s our guide to renting a vacation home.)
Give Vacasa an opportunity to fix the issue
If you have an issue with its Premium Clean guarantee, give the rental company at least 24 hours to clean the property. Be sure to document everything in writing, which means staying off the phone.
Ask for a reasonable refund
Again, using the word “compensation” can be problematic. Instead, ask for a partial refund or an adjustment of your rate based on the problem. To keep things simple, it’s usually better to leave the home and ask for a refund of your unused nights.
If the answer is no, appeal
I list the names, numbers and email addresses of the Vacasa executives on this site. A brief, polite email to one of them may get things moving in the right direction.
So what will happen to this case?
Bizarrely, before Vacasa went silent, it sent Storie an email saying that it was happy it had resolved this issue. But it hadn’t. In the text messages, a representative had agreed to some “compensation” but did not specify how much. And then, nothing.
I thought this was a strange case for a few reasons. The Stories should have left the rental, but I also suspected Vacasa was confused by the many things that went wrong. Companies often dismiss laundry-list complaints about quality, and I suspected that might have been what happened.
Someone at Vacasa glanced over the Storie case and then closed it.
I contacted Vacasa on Storie’s behalf. The company gave me the silent treatment, too. So I asked again a few weeks later. And this time, it responded.
“Hi, Chris, Vacasa reached out yesterday afternoon,” Storie reported. “Crystal, the regional manager for Destin, Fla., left me a voicemail. I called her back today, and she offered $2,000 in compensation for the mold, roaches, and urine-stained bedding.”
He added, “THANK YOU very much for your help. I don’t think they would have responded without your organization getting involved.”
Vacasa also released a statement and posted it to the home’s review page, in which it “sincerely” apologized for his experience.
“Our team of housekeepers takes pride in their cleanliness standards, as it is a top priority service we provide for every guest before check-in. Please know that this is not commonplace, and we thank you for calling for local staff to resolve these issues promptly. We’re happy that we could resolve these issues during your stay and that you have been refunded for the complications you experienced.”
This is not the first complaint we’ve had about dirty Vacasa rentals. So if you rent a home through Vacasa, or any other company, don’t forget to conduct a full inspection when you arrive.
Otherwise, you could end up in a vacation home with mold, urine and cockroaches — sorry, I mean palmetto bugs.
