I have just spent 4 days in the filthiest holiday flat in the world, owner is now blaming us, AIBU to want to ruin her life?

[filthyflat]

And I am only slightly joking...

Namechanged to protect the innocent (me!)

Ok, I am presuming that I am not just being overly fussy as the flat was properly filthy, but all the reviews on several rental sites have it as 5 stars and spotlessly clean!!!

When the taxi pulled up outside, i thought it was a bit rundown, but ok, then we ventured inside. it is fair to say it could have done with being redecorated, peeling wall paper etc, but again, we thought ok.... then we went to explore.....

Kids get upstairs slightly before us "muuuuuum, the bin is full of wee!" go up to discover that the bin in the kids room is indeed full of urine...
-every corner of every room has cobwebs
-huge damp patch with flaking paint in one bedroom
-2 overhead lights don't work
-dirt all over the floor
-bins not been emptied since last guest
-doors are all filthy, ingrained dirt, living room door looks like someone sprayed a bottle of coke up it and didn't clean it
-kitchen overhead light fittings were white ceramic, with inches of dust on them
-bathroom was filthy, shampoo bottle left on floor behind sink with inches of dirt clearly hadn't been moved for years (literally)
-in the garden BBQ had been used as an ashtray around 50 cigarette buts floating in stinking dirty water.

Soooo we try to phone the owner, voicemail saying she is (conveniently) out of the country, leave a voicemail to ask her to call asap, also email her. There are no other phone numbers to contact anyone in an emergency.

Try to get somewhere else to stay but there is 8 of us and it's a bank holiday weekend, so the cheapest we can get is about £150 pp per night...so not ideal.

After a while realise we have no choice but to tidy up and stay....thankfully the bedding looked clean. We stayed out all day every day only going home to sleep (which totally added to the cost of our long weekend!)

On our last day a housekeeper arrives as we are leaving, she is roughly 15 and speaks hardly any English, I try to explain the way we found the flat, she giggles, realise we are getting nowhere so leave.

Email owner on arrival home, with all our complaints, she says it all must have been us and we are lucky she is not billing us for specialised cleaning. Says they have never had a complaint before, and to be fair all the reviews of it give 5 stars and say it is spotless (makes me wonder if they are all made up or wonder where the people who think it is spotless live!!!)

I have photos of everything on my phone....Anything I can do?

Try

airbnb.com next time

not only can you review the place but the owners review you too- how you left it. we get great rentals via it.

Did you take photos before you cleaned up, filthyflat? From what you've described, it sounds as if photos would leave no doubt at all that the filth had been building up for ages, hence the owner's accusation could not be true.

I've been in some poor holiday rentals, including some that weren't terribly clean, but nothing anywhere near as bad as this - poor you, OP!

I don't think you would be unreasonable to send her a letter with photos as evidence, recorded delivery and then if no joy, small claims. How you would ruin her life I'm not sure, and it seems slightly disproportionate to a 4 day holiday let!

From the attitude of the housekeeper though and the fact the owner is abroad it sounds like this is your explanation. Holiday let companies frequently do nothing once they have taken the booking and deposit - there isn't much money in holiday lets for them, unless you go to the top end of the market and everything is managed with a fine tooth comb.

I do the same myself, but in reverse - taking photos of mess and dirt left behind by guests (not very often but does happen). The only complaint I've ever had was about my property being in too busy a location and on the second floor as advertised and therefore unsuitable for pensioners - not much I can do about that. Gave them their money back as they preferred to stay in a hotel. It might be that the owner has met the type of holiday renter who trashes the place and then claims it was like that to start with, but its generally pretty easy to work out who is trying it on and who is genuine.

I knew it would be this rental. I remember you asking about plumstead,they were v cheeky to list it as Greenwich. I had a feeling that it may be grim but you had already paid. Sorry you had this experience. Leave feedback wherever you can from all of you,several saying it's filthy is going to do more damage than one.

Hmm, the reviews on the different websites are identical to each other. Even down to spelling mistakes. German contractors reviewed on two websites, roller-derby girl, lass from San Antonio...

Plumstead is in the London Borough of Greenwich, which is how they think they can get away with implying the flat is in Greenwich, to those not in the know - but Greenwich would certainly not form a part of the address. Very crafty of them. I'm not sure whereabouts in Plumstead the flat is, but it could be quite some distance from Greenwich itself.

Icelolly, I remember the other thread as well. It didn't bode well they were passing it off as Greenwich but I hoped it might be half -decent....

OP, definitely take landlady to small claims.

I was a bit concerned about it after the thread I started about the area (should learn to do threads asking questions before paying ) but to be honest, if the flat had been clean we would have had no complaints, the area wasn't the best, but we had things planned to do everyday, and we did have a really good time.

CatIsSleepy, get your house rented out, you could charge more than that at the Olympics and you don't even really need to go to the bother of cleaning it first!

The owner doesn't live abroad, she was just conveniently out of the country for the same length of time that we were in the flat, she lives in London (amazing what you can find out through facebook!)

Haven't heard back from either the owner or the rental company today and don't really expect to either to be honest. I will get my friend who I was with to add their own reviews to the various website and think about our next move.

Owner has responded to my review with:

"As you can see from this review, it paints a pretty black picture, however, if you read the previous reviews on this website you can see that we put our guests at the heart of our business.

We are aware of the issue of the paint work in the rear bedroom and we have already scheduled repairs to be carried out during the next break between guests. I am sure you will appreciate that all older properties have problems from time to time. However, repairs can not be effected while guests are present.

We have used the same cleaner for the past two years and have every confidence in her abilities, she has often been at pains to point out additional work that requires attention.

We have spoken to the current guests who moved in on the same day that "Flithyflat" moved out and they are entirely satisfied with the condition of the property.

We welcome feedback so that we can continue to improve our service to our customers and we believe the other reviews speak for themselves. "

No wonder the people that moved in after us were satisfied! We cleaned it!!!

So put more feedback: 'Glad you were happy with the state of the flat. It took us ages to get it up to that standard!' FF

I don't think I can add to it again, but will give it a go!! Good plan!

I have looked at the other reviews on that site and they are eerily familiar in the way that they are written, I just don't think they're genuine.

Filthy (sorry, can I call you that? ) have you sent a "formal" response letter/email to the first reply as well as the internet review. You do really need to do this.

"Following my email of etc etc" "I will be contacting x x next" etc

The owner isn't likely to take you seriously until you show you are serious about following this up.

That sounds like a hideous experience! It would definitely be the small claims court for me! Sorry you had such a shit time!

at being called Filthy!

Our correspondence has been this..

Me: voicemail left and email sent on our arrival
Her: email once she knew we were back asking if everything was ok
Me: emailed her outlining all the problems we had and how unhappy we were
her: email saying she should bill us due to the state we left the flat in
Me: Emailed asking her to outline exactly what she felt we had done as the flat was cleaner on leaving than we found it
There has been no response back.

Then the review. And a phonecall/email to the rental company. Do you think I should write to her again? I don't have a postal address for her.

The reviews are made up, they must be!

Can you not also point out on the website, in answer to her answer to your review, that the satisfied reviews also appear word for word on other websites.

oh no - this is you isn't it.... :(

I wondered how your weekend went...

It is me! We did have a really great weekend, really enjoyed ourselves, just the flat was a bit of a let down! But all your advice and directions were great, really helpful, and it was great knowing about the station that was further away but had the cab office, we used that each night. I was so glad we knew about that especially the day we ventured out to Chessington lost track of time and got home really late!

Actually, I'm going to call you Flatty instead I think

Sounds good and I didn't mean to sound at all doubtful/patronising as to whether you are doing things properly. I just know how much these kind of disputes can often come down to playing the game as much as having a reasonable case.

Personally, I do think you should mail again after a couple of days stating that you haven't received a response. And maybe also send copies of that correspondence to the clearly dodgy booking website too.

Hope you get it sorted btw. And glad you had a good time despite it all.