Warning - Read this review before booking
Review Submitted: May 12, 2009
Date of Stay: March 2009
After booking this villa we were informed that no one could meet us on arrival and no local point of contact was available. The owner is not local.
We arrived to find a very musty smell in the property and also that the heating did not work. The property was very cold and had not been aired since the last guests left. There is no known maintenance service available, but we did manage to fix the heating ourselves by the end of the first day. This then produced a bad smell of burning throughout the night.
The kitchen was dirty and the fridge and worktops had to be scrubbed before we were happy to use them. There is a charge for cleaning, but obviously a cleaner had not visited since the previous tennants.
We discovered that the fridge did not cool anything although the light did work in the fridge, we tried to adjust the settings on this, but, to no avail.
We arrived back at the villa after dark on the second day to find that there was no electricity and therefore, no lights, heating, hot water, TV, Internet etc. The place was not habitable! Apparently the local electrical company had disconected it because the bills had not been paid.
We tried to call the owner, but, to no avail, we sent a text to the owner detailing the problems and left the following day. Our vacation was ruined!
The owner eventually sent a text back with no remorse, basically saying "Where is my money, you have to pay for the 2 days" We had already left the payment in excess of 2 days rental, at the villa, but she would not know that because she was not there. She later calmed down and sent an appologetic email offering to pay us back the 2 days payment that we had left because of the problems she had caused and asked for our bank details to do so. When we sent these, she sent another email saying that she had changed her mind again and would not refund anything because she had incurred some expenses such as phone calls to us etc. This pales into insignificance when compared to our expenses in travelling from the UK to Tuscany for a ruined holiday and the extra hotel bills incurred as a result.
If you are thinking of using this villa you would be well advised to take a generator, a heater, a tool kit and some cleaning materials. Good luck!
Owner's Response: The criticicism above does not consider that the couple had agreed with me that no one would meet and greet them at the house on arrival. I asked them straightforwardly in an sms on learning that they had had trouble if they had left me payment for their 2-night accomodation. I offered later in an email to pay the English couple back and got no response 10 days to 2 weeks long. When I added up my costs for telephone calls with them before their stay (which included extremely high roaming charges to my mobile phone for a call from England) and the charges for bed linens, heat, cleaning, and delivering and picking up keys, I decided I could not return the amount they had left me for two nights.
The tenants called me about renting just a few days in advance of their stay. They had travelled first to the Cote d'Azur. I was not able to organize the professional cleaner at such short notice rather relied on a friend of mine who had been at the house for three weeks( just in advance of the couple by one day) to please clean the house well. Apparently they forgot the kitchen. The couple had difficulty turning on the heat. They had turned the radiator knobs to off to begin with. (There was plenty of firewood in the shed where the boilder was to warm up in the meantime.) They had been instructed by me as to how to turn on the heat/boiler, and there was a booklet next to the boiler with my notes which they read, and the heat went on. Granted they did not want to clean the counters in the kitchen and refridgerator. I am very sorry that the couple had a misfortunate stay at my house (the electricity failure could have resulted from a storm) and I am sorry they were not able due to mitigating circumstances to appreciate the house and its setting as most guests do happily and at the end of their stay regretting to leave.
Did you find this review helpful?
Yes
No
Helpful votes: 3/3
marks the location of the property in Piana di Lucca
