Amazing Views, Lovely House... Creepy Surveillance & High Unexpected Fee's.
If you are looking to write, read or relax, this is the perfect place for you....as long as you don't mind that there's several surveillance camera's around the property, easily seen over the front doors and elsewhere. I have no reason to believe that we were filmed inside. If you have a guest over for dinner or light a candle on a cupcake, I would worry that this would be entitled an "event" and you may get charged a fee.
Here's our story; maybe it will help you decide if this is the right place for you.
We rented the Big Sur Stone House for three days in August 2012, for four of us. The rental fee per night was significantly higher than their posted rate because there were four people instead of two, and it included the cleaning fee. We planned to have a private wedding ceremony at the beach on a Monday, with our dear friend and her partner officiating and witnessing our simple ceremony, but knew we'd have to figure that out after we got there as we weren't familiar with the area. We let one of the owners know that we were planning on getting married, but came to find out, she didn't understand we would actually exchange our vows in Big Sur. When an out of town relative reached out to her, asking for an address to send congratulatory flowers, we received a stern email that stated if any of our guests showed up on the property for our wedding 'event,' even to use the telephone, we would be charged an additional day use fee per person. (Because of legalities, I won't tell you the amount of the fee, but it rhymes with "Haiti").
When we arrived the owner was there to greet us and she was nice and gave us a lovely bottle of wine and had small flowers arrangements throughout the rooms as a welcome and congratulatory gift. Once we settled in, we observed that there were several little cameras around the house and knew that much of what we did was most likely being captured on video. There was no written or verbal notice prior or during our stay that we were being recorded, only our visual observation that there were cameras installed. We also realized that there was no way easy or quick way to walk to the beach (no shoulder on the busy road) and even if we drove there, there was a steep hike down to the beach. Logistically, it made sense to have our ceremony on the patio facing the ocean.
Besides us four (paying) guests, we were fortunate to have a couple that live part-time in Big Sur join us for the ceremony and a post ceremony toast. We understood that we'd have to pay "the per guest day use fee"(even though they were there less than two hours and didn't even enter the actual house). Our ceremony was perfect, exactly what we wanted. Six people, 15 minutes and a memorably heartwarming toast with wine and cheese. Our local friends departed and we had a lovely dinner with the four of us.
About a week after we had ended our stay, we received an email from the owners thanking us for the "truly excellent work you did on cleaning the house before you left; everything was spotless which is above the call of duty, and quite wonderful" and then stating that they had reviewed the video and that, since we had an "event" at their property, we would be charged an event fee. (Again, because of legalities, I won't say the amount, but it's the same amount as the title of the movie where Gerard Butler yells "We Are Sparta!") This would be on top of the "day use fee" for the two guest and that we would receive the remaining balance of our deposit by mail. We asked them to reconsider charging us for what we considered excessive fees, an additional 60% of another, very expensive, nights stay, but they flatly refused and stated that, in their opinion, we had perpetrated fraud (even though we didn't try and cover the cameras or put a stop payment on our security deposit check) and we should be happy that we got out of it with only paying such a small fee.
We're pretty simple folks and renting this home was a splurge for us. Small fee. Really? Well, I guess if you compare it to the thousands of dollars that we had already paid for the rental fee, then maybe it could be considered small.
Our wedding ceremony was beautiful and nothing can mar that. While we will absolutely return to Big Sur to celebrate anniversaries, we will never return to or recommend the Big Sur Stone House, which is really a shame, as we probably would have if things had turned out differently.
So, that's it, I will let you decide, as a potential renter, if this is the right property for you. Good luck.
PS...For view and location, it would have received 5 stars.
UPDATE: It's so funny, I finally got my review up on Home Away...the owner (Ana T.) tries to make it sound like they only observe things from the security gate camera (you can't see it from the house & it points to the street) but there are more than one on the house itself. Fyi, Steve & I wrote the review together. read more
