I will start with the good things: The living room is really spacious and it was a cool place to hang out with everyone. The dining table is nice and big (weird chairs) which was really key for our large group. The kitchen is okay for cooking with and for a big group because of the little island. The screened-in deck is lovely and we made good use of the firepit.
And here are the problems:
When we arrived the house smelled so strongly of a fake fragrance that we had to open all the windows and doors to remedy this. Upon inspection, we found that 3 of the beds had been doused with this strong smell. This led us to wonder if the linens had been cleaned or merely sprayed to smell "nice". Because there was no washer and dryer there (contrary to the listing), my partner drove to the laundromat with the bed linens so that we and the rest of our guests would be able to sleep.
We found only 2 forks, a big problem for a house with space for 10 people. Luckily a late-arrival guest brought some more.
Kitchen and bathroom cleanliness were sub-par.
The host answered one of my questions and then stopped responding, and did not offer any solution to the smell problem.
Last but worst is that there is a CAMERA pointed towards the hot tub, something we didn't notice until our last day. Being that we were seven women and the hosts were all men, we found this extremely disconcerting, as would any person of any gender.
Though it is legal to have cameras on the exterior of a rental property, they must be disclosed in the listing, which they are not.
Since I did not think to take a picture of the camera, Evolve and Vrbo both can offer nothing to compensate us for this violation of privacy.
We were given a refund of a relatively small amount that did not even equal the amount of the cleaning fee. I'm not very happy with this given that we spent a couple of hours dealing with the issues before we could even think of enjoying ourselves.
For the cost, I would hope that Vrbo and Evolve would improve oversight of these properties and do more to hold the owners to a better standard.
This could be a spectacular place if these things were taken care of and the host actually communicated.
