Back in May, my MIL mentioned that her sister had a villa in Spain and they might go. We haven't much money this year so asked if she'd mind if we used it as well (another week obviously) and how much she'd charge. She said yes and would just charge us a bit for electricity and the cleaner etc. Fantastic! Got our flights booked. She sent us a couple of pics, looked okay, MIL said was nice and, given she usually has pretty high standards, we thought it sounded fine! Two days before we travelled though, DH's auntie contacted us to say she was charging €200 for villa. A bit more than electric costs we thought but still cheap for a week on the Costa Blanca in August. We also found out from MIL who had just stayed here that there was no air con and we started to worry a bit! Anyway, arrived on Tuesday night to find that, not only was there no air con but ceiling fans barely work, it was in an awful cramped, built up area, the bathroom stank, all the dirty washing was piled up from MIL's stay, couple of dead cockroaches, furniture on its last legs, beds awful, hubbie has bed bug bites (it's also terrible for midges around here). It's even smaller than we thought and the fridge won't stay cold as the seal has gone ages ago and it's not been defrosted in forever, tv doesn't work (not that we'd use it much anyway). It's obviously not serviced (I think she may have an agreement with an ex pay up the road cos he did let us in when we arrived but not seen him since. We have to give him the €200. ) The only saving grace is that it has its own pool which seems fine! We're making the best of it but DH suffering in the heat especially and isn't well with it, the kids are stoical but I can't help feeling annoyed that it was made out to be nice and in fact it's not at all and we've brought the children here! We would never have come had we known. She couldn't rent it out to fee paying holidaymakers. Thank god we have a car so can get to beach (which is 20 mins away!)