If you’re planning a vacation rental stay, you need to do one thing before you kick off your shoes and unpack — if you don’t want to end up with surprise cleaning fees. Grab your phone and start taking pictures.
Lots of pictures.
I speak from personal experience. I just checked out of a vacation rental and got broadsided with one of the most outrageous cleaning fee claims in my career. More on that in a minute.
When Marilyn Harrett called off her Hawaii vacation last spring, she thought she could get a refund for a canceled vacation rental. After all, her state was locked down and so was the Aloha State. There was no way she’d be able to make it to her rental in Maui.
Oh, and one more thing: She had an email from the vacation rental company promising her a refund. Slam dunk, right?
Wrong.
What should you do if you check into a dangerous vacation rental? That’s the problem Shui-man Tong faced when she arrived in Lisbon and found her TripAdvisor rental in a deep freeze.It was early December, and the temperature inside the rental had plunged below 40 degrees. What happened next forced Tong to find alternate accommodations and ask TripAdvisor for a refund.
Angela Diaz suffers from travel sharing fatigue. She recently rented a two-bedroom home in Dania Beach, Florida, but wishes she’d stayed in a hotel, instead.
