My crazy year with a Rental Agency Part 3… the bad
5 PART SERIES
PART 3
The Bad:
The Rental Agency were haughtily apathetic to renters we initiated when they were not filling our calendar
We found 6 week renters and negotiated with our Rental Agency to split the commission 50/50 so that rather than blocking the house for 6 weeks and they made no commission they would get 15% commission instead of the 30%. We were not trying to cut them out, just aggressively trying to get our home rented.
The rental agency’s cleaning crew left only 6 rolls of toilet paper in the house for 6 weeks – the renter called the agency to complain and the agency said “Sorry” but wouldn’t help. She called me, said they were rude, dismissing and haughty – I ordered toilet paper, paper towels, and tissue through Amazon Prime and had it there to her the next day. It’s not that renters couldn’t buy it themselves, they paid thousands of dollars to stay there, she was standing on principle – I totally get it.
They BRUTALIZED us with cleaning fees
to the point we couldn’t afford to use our own house when it sat empty. We opted to take the house off the rental market for 6 weeks during summer our slow season just so we could use the house without having to pay their cleaning fees. They didn’t have it rented all summer, so we took advantage.
At one point one of our neighbor who also rented their home offered us their rental housekeeper. She only charged us $90 to clean – we were thrilled. The house looked perfect yet when they agency came in they told us they found a hair in the 2nd shower and would be billing us $195 to “re-clean” the house. It was a racket.
They did not want us to use our own because they up-charged the cleaning fees. Cleaning fees are industry standard and everyone pays them went renting a Vacation Rental. Everyone is in business to make money, I get it. But to gouge your homeowners when you are already charging considerable commissions and fees is intolerable.
We found out later they stopped using a subcontracted cleaning agency and opened their own in-house cleaning. Apparently, rental cleaning fees were very lucrative for them.
They were not owner friendly.
They didn’t play nice when renter added a cable channel to our lineup that was locked with a PIN. We still never figured out how they did it. But the repercussion was it costs us hundreds of dollars over the next couple years.
Strict standard until they failed to meet them
After adamantly declaring their strict adherence to city ordinances about occupancy, they allowed 15 girls to stay in our house for Stagecoach. We caught it because each girl individually signed our guest book with a lovely note thanking us for letting them “stay in [our] lovely home”. When we brought it to their attention they acted like it was inconsequential. We learned a lesson though; it’s why we now interview potential renters for events and concerts – and don’t allow automatic bookings for those events.
Made purchases then billed us
Charge us for replacing or upgrading things we didn’t even know we needed. We were not notified; they just subtracted it from our commission later. To add insult to injury, they charged us $20 an hour to go buy what ever “it” was they purchased.
Used “inside” vendors – so they could make a profit on everything.
Inside Handyman, inside Pest control, inside Cleaning, etc. They sold it like it was wonderful with phrases like “immediate action”, “quality control”, “all internally handled so not to trouble you”. We totally bought it.
It always felt like the agencies management was looking for an angle and stood on arrogance or ‘snubbiness’ to defend it.
