Magical Vacation Homes is the worst rental I've stayed at and my family and I have visited vacation…read morerentals across the country over the past decade. We were only staying for 5 days and we arrived late the first day and left early the fifth day, so really just three full days. In that time, we were visited by four repair teams, one came twice, due to issues in the home. The position that Magical Vacation Home takes is that if they fix your issue in 24 hours, you shouldn't be upset. While this may seem like good customer service, imagine having to host multiple repair teams into the home while you are trying to relax on vacation. Here is a short list of the problems we faced:
- amenities that didn't work or were broken (damaged pool table, video game remotes that weren't charged and had no charging cables making them unusable, a room advertised as a movie room with smart TV which actually only played cable television - which was also out, and TVs with nothing to watch but Netflix even though they called them smart TVs)
- unclean accommodations (pasta sauce splashed over an area rug, wads of hair on the shower wall, more pasta sauce on the kitchen counters), bugs (we killed a roach and had ants), and kids toys and used cups littered around the backyard from previous guests
- broken and missing furniture (dining table was said to be for 8 but only had 7 chairs and two of those were broken)
- Broken tiles in the bathroom, a broken window upstairs, singe marks on the kitchen ceiling, marker drawn onto the curtains, two broken doors (this obviously didn't impact our vacation, but just be aware the listing photos seem to be out dated)
They sent, unannounced, people to bring us charging cables, clean the rug, try to spray chemicals in the home for pests, and someone to try and fix the media room TV. In all we had five different visits on our vacation, in three days, when these things should have been handled before we arrived.
Magical Vacation Homes will tell you that they fixed some of the issues, so what's the big deal? The big deal is that we spend over $500 per night to have quality family time, not host repair men. We didn't expect the first one and they just let themselves in while we were home in our pajamas (when we complained, we were told they have the right, per the agreement we signed, for their repair teams to come in at any time without letting you know, so there is really no privacy as their staff can just walk in to the home you rented with or without you in it). We let the second repair man in. The third one walked to the back of the house while we were in the pool. The fourth one showed up as we were leaving and we turned him away as we didn't want him to spray chemicals in the home while we were in it. The fifth one was in the house when we came home one day and the front door was unlocked when we arrived as well.
Again, many of these are small issues, but they added up to a big problem for our family who just wanted to relax. After all this, all I asked was that the company refund the cleaning fee as the house wasn't clean among the many other small
Issues. They refused and offered us a late check out when our flight is early on the final day so that was of no use to us. We refused. They then offered us 15% off to stay again. We won't be doing that. I told them it was the cleaning fee or nothing and that I would be sharing my review and reporting their company to the BBB. They then accused me of trying to extort them for money with the threat of bad reviews and they offered me $100 back on an over $2000 rental. I told them to keep their money as we were beyond that now and I would be sharing my review of their rentals far and wide. This wasn't ever about money, it was about not getting what we paid for and them getting our money for services not provided and nonfictional amenities. Had we known there were so many issues with the amenities this house boasts, we would have not chosen this house and spent our money with this company.
I highly encourage you to stay anywhere else than with Magical Vacation Homes. There is a joke in here somewhere that their homes are less than magical, but I can promise you it's worse than even that. Choose anywhere else to stay and believe any and all bad reviews you read. I wish we would have. We are now out money and time on a bad rental and a worse rental company. Please don't follow in our footsteps.