We booked and reached out to Greg (the property owner) about a week from arrival. My original request was whether they allowed 1 night bookings, and whether the cleaning fee was negotiable due to their normal 2 night minimums.
Unfortunately, by the time we received an answer back from Greg. There was only one day available to book and the owner accepted the request. We paid all booking, service, and cleaning fees for the one night and were excited to spend 1 day at mammoth bike park.
When I called Greg to confirm the reservation. His response was "Are you going to just trash my house, after a two-week hike". I am not exactly sure where he gathered this information, but his demeanor was extremely rude and uncalled for.
The home has no air conditioning, the upstairs loft (advertised as a bedroom) was hot. The fan in the loft did not work, and even with the balcony window open, it was steamy. The downstairs bedrooms stayed cold.
There is no washer / dryer / hot tub / pool at the unit. It is all in the central club house.
One of the downstairs bathroom showers was not cleaned and had brown slime on the ground. The carpets not vacuumed. Some carpet had stains.
Almost even dish we touched was dirty. The blender has remanence of whatever it was last used for. Two pans still had fried egg remains, 1 pot has red sauce residue and a piece of onion stuck to the walls of the pot. 2 bowls were dirty with who knows what. Spatula that had remains of food on it. It was disgusting.
After we checked out, I contacted Greg, and described everything I wrote above. He thanked me for my input and requested I do not write a bad review. I responded and said that I would like to get my cleaning fee back.
I was told that,
“You would have been hard pressed to accommodate your group at Motel 6 for what you paid Kirill. Let’s be serious here.”
"I had a feeling you were trying to hustle us from the beginning. Pleading for us to make an exception on a one day rental, complaining about the place when I know it was clean and then asking for a credit back. Additionally, you took a large crew in their for one night and took full advantage of the entire place.”
Lastly Greg tried to threaten to blackmail me, so that I don’t leave a negative review by saying.
“Do understand, if you say one negative thing in a review, I will disclose your attempt to hustle us in my review of you for all future hosts to see. Every time you request a booking, it will be there!"
We reported him to VRBO.