Villa Cleanliness

[cymbeline]

I had similar problems with an owner and the Dibb website closed my thread because they weren't happy. I hadn't named her at all but she recognised it as being her and she advertised on the Dibb. House went into foreclosure eventually. I also did a review on Trip Advisor and the 'new' owner complained about that. I understand there are two sides to the story but I think it's dreadful that you have no comeback with these owners who are not always being honest.

 

[skelfbsfb]

Now see that the owner has put villa up for sale, wonder how the other renter for the rest of the year feel about that or have they even been informed.

 

[Netty]

All makes sense now...

 

[NicolaUK]

Don't give up on getting your money back, especially your deposit.

Can I ask what community it was on? Wasn't Silver Creek was it?

We've rented before and turned up to find the place up for sale, it didn't make any difference to our stay and I know usually the existing bookings are transferred to the new owner but it's still quite jarring if you had no idea!

 

[Pegasus928]

Now see that the owner has put villa up for sale, wonder how the other renter for the rest of the year feel about that or have they even been informed.

It does make sense that if they were thinking of selling that they would have lost a bit of interest in the villa, although that would appear to be counter productive as surley it would be easier to sell a villa that is well maintained

As for the other renters it may turn out in their favour. If the villa sells quickly (something I wouldn't hold my breath about) the new owners with have some enthusiasm for the project and will be keen to show the place off in a new light. Hopefully this will be a positive for the upcoming renters.
My concern would be if it doesn't sell quickly, and whether the present owners are willing to pu tthe time, effort and money in to ensure that anyone who has paid their hard earned cash for their holiday isn't affected by this.

 

[T16GEM]

yes that makes sense now.

 

[skelfbsfb]

Don't give up on getting your money back, especially your deposit.

Can I ask what community it was on? Wasn't Silver Creek was it?

We've rented before and turned up to find the place up for sale, it didn't make any difference to our stay and I know usually the existing bookings are transferred to the new owner but it's still quite jarring if you had no idea!

No it wasnt Silver Creek.

 

[NicolaUK]

I only ask as a friend recently rented there from that site and said never again, arrived to find the place to be filthy, was initially ignored by the owner etc. Man Co were good and came next day to fix what they could, the owner did get in touch after they said the guest had complained but just sounds like cost cutting

 

[skelfbsfb]

Looks like its caused a we stir on the forum that the owner advertises on. A certain villa owner is so apaulled that they took my thread off and that the owner is not accepting responsibility. Maybe starting to get somewhere now.

 

[NicolaUK]

I really hope you get this resolved, don't be bullied in to keeping quiet, you've done nothing wrong

 

[skelfbsfb]

Been informed if I keep making reference to this on the Dibb then my account will be suspended. Thanks for the support Stu. Money from Advertisers talks louder.

 

[NicolaUK]

Speechless

Stick with it, they can't hold your deposit, if they continue to mess you around contact Trading Standards.

Best of luck

 

[UKDEB]

Any further definition of character we will take this matter further.

Definition? Seriously? These people clearly don't have a clue.

Looks like its caused a we stir on the forum that the owner advertises on. A certain villa owner is so apaulled that they took my thread off and that the owner is not accepting responsibility. Maybe starting to get somewhere now.

I can understand that. If I was an owner of integrity, I would be appalled, too. In a way I can understand why the owners of the Dibb wouldn't want this played out on their site, but they would be well advised to also pull the owner's advertising. They're now on notice of improper dealings and could become implicit (regardless of any disclaimers) in any action by you or future renters.

they can't hold your deposit

Absolutely. They have no grounds to withhold your deposit. I know this probably isn't what you want to hear, but you need to get a solicitor to send a letter. My worry is that they have no money to refund your deposit which is why they're taking this absurd stance. They're either scared or trying to scare you. Or, most likely, both.

 

[Disneymad]

Been informed if I keep making reference to this on the Dibb then my account will be suspended. Thanks for the support Stu. Money from Advertisers talks louder.

Poor show

 

[T16GEM]

Money from Advertisers talks louder.

Exactly what I said on this thread ages ago.

 

[UK~STU]

William,
You seem to have a knack at manipulating things to your own ends.
Why did you not post the FULL story here regarding the reasons I said your account would be suspended? is it because you ONLY want to show YOUR angle on things?

I'm very disappointed that you would come on to another forum site and post snippets of my personal messages to you. I will not be sending you further PM's as I do not want them mis quoted and plastered all over the public internet. Any message I send to you is between you and I, but it seems you are incapable of respecting that

What is the point of us discussing things when you are taking things completely out of context, no wonder the villa owner doesn't want to respond to you if this is the attitude you are taking with them

To put the story straight.

You were making posts on the DIBB complaining about your bad experience on every post that just happened to mention anything about villa reviews.

I asked you to stop repeatedly posting about your complaint on those threads.

You said to me that you were going to continue posting. That to me was saying that you didn't care about the rules of the site and you would carry on regardless.

I said that if you could not abide by the rules of the DIBB then you would leave us no choice but to suspend your account.

The threat of suspension was because you had told me that you were going to continue breaking the rules of the DIBB.

The last PM I sent to you was

Hi William,
I don't want to suspend your account.

You may not agree with the rules I set for the forum but I would hope that if you are using the site then you would respect the rules.

If I came to your house and you wanted me to remove my shoes before entering, then I would respect that. If I didn't agree with your reasons for me removing my shoes I wouldn't just barge past you and enter regardless.

I do hope you can resolve your issue with the owner.

As I said in my previous email, we are now actively looking at implementing a villa review system which will hopefully give a fair system where members will have an avenue to leave both good and bad reviews.

The system we are thinking of would allow the member and the owner to reply to a review once only. This would then prevent an argumentive thread where both sides blame each other. This would give both sides to any dispute rather than just a one sided biased message in the forums.

Regards
Stu

further more you do have posts that are still viewable on this subject on the DIBB website.
See HERE
and HERE

For the record William.
It makes no difference to me personally or the DIBB web site if there is a bad review for a Villa.
You seem to have it in your head that I'm somehow trying to hide Bad reviews, that is very short sighted of you and insulting! I am not hiding any bad reviews on the site. If you care to do a search on the site you will see the occasional bad review for an advertiser in full view of the public.

It wouldn't be in my interest to hide reviews, good or bad, and I resent the fact that you seem to be publicly accusing me of this!

I said at the beginning and I still warrant that the only way to resolve this is in private.

Absolutely no one on this site knows the FULL truth of both sides, all they have is YOUR account which I supposed is going to be biased in your favour.

It might be different if the owner had answered you in public but from what I can see the owner is keeping things private, which is the correct way to conduct disputes, otherwise you end up with the lynch mob mentality!

As I have already said to you, IF you feel that you have a case against the owner then take legal advice and do something about it in the proper manner rather than banging on about it on public forums.

I don't know the full truth and I happily admit that but IF and I do mean IF, what you are saying is the truth then you do have my sympathy and I do genuinely hope you get a satisfactory outcome to this. My gut feeling though is you have made it difficult for yourself by making this so public.

 

[lin85prest]

I think William has all our sympathy, it must be so disappointing if you arrive at a villa which is not up to standard. Most of us have to work and save hard to get there in the first place. I have no idea where the villa in question is and just hope it is not the one we are going to in October.

 

[UK~STU]

In a way I can understand why the owners of the Dibb wouldn't want this played out on their site, but they would be well advised to also pull the owner's advertising. They're now on notice of improper dealings and could become implicit (regardless of any disclaimers) in any action by you or future renters.

Hi Deb,
What proof is there of any wrong doing? all we have is Williams say so!

Would you personally vouch for William? do you personally know him?

I can not verify one way or the other if what william is telling us is correct, can you? As far as I know only William and the Owners know both sides and in my opinion it is up to them, not us, to resolve the issue.

Once the issue is resolved, one way or the other, we then have some tangible evidence to take any required action one way or another.

If I posted here saying I had major problems with an advertiser here on the DIS, the DIS owners aren't going to pull the advert unless they have absolute proof. This is the same for the DIBB.

As for the DIBB being accused of putting money first over it's members is ridiculous and again very short sighted by those accusing the DIBB, I know some may have a grudge against the DIBB but it is still ridiculous when they don't know any facts

I would happily remove all villa owner advertising from the DIBB as it causes us lots of headaches for no profit. But it is what the members want, they want to be able to converse with the villa owners prior to making a booking, which is much more preferable than dealing with a faceless villa rental company where your villa is allocated on arrival.

Villas on the DIBB are very popular, the members love the way the system works as it's unique. As with anything there will occasionally be a bad report, but we have to take this in context.

We charge the villa owners between £25 and £50 per year to advertise, less than £1 per week. This is peanuts compared to the amount of work we do. As a web designer I charge more than that to design a single web page. The amount of time I have devoted to this one problem alone just isn't worth the small amount we charge the villa owners

We are inundated with advertising requests and we do not accept them all, we only accept the ones that we think are in the best interests of our members. We have turned down several villa advertising agencies that want to advertise their villa inventories with us and pay us thousands of pounds for the privilege. We turned them down as it's not what our members want. If we were just after the money then it would be easy to ditch all the current owners and take on these agencies!

The DIBB isn't our main business, we are a web design company and the DIBB is a showcase site for us.

Also anyone that is active on the DIBB will probably have seen we have removed advertisers previously where the level of service isn't up to par. This usually results from more than one complaint though.

Obviously people will believe what they want, and I'm not really here to defend or justify what we do on the DIBB, just to say that things aren't always what they seem or what others would have you believe.

Regards
Stu

 

[Disneymad]

Well you know what they say....

"There's my side of the story, your side of the story and then there's the truth"

Personally I think mistakes were made in how this was handled in general. Things go wrong and everyone understands that the best laid plans can go awry sometimes - it's how something is handled afterwards that the real damage can occur. If the villa owners reputation is tarnished it's by their own response to this situation by ironically threatening to sue for Slander (LOL?) - that in itself raised more red flags for me than Stalin's birthday party

Moving forward though the review system you're looking at implementing is a good idea and would also prevent the DIBB from appearing to be take sides which can only be a good thing

 

[NicolaUK]

It's all very good and well saying it should be dealt with in private but it gets pretty frustrating when you're ignored by the owner, been there done that. The only way to get my previous dispute rectified was to involve the site owner the villa was advertised on and the villa owner was all butter couldn't melt immediately, even though it was obvious he was lying through his teeth.

It's not the norm but there are owners out there that just want the income and don't generally care when things go wrong. To say 'we only have your word' is pretty poor IMO, why would anyone make something like that up?