This was a much less desirable visit than I would’ve hoped, given the points mentioned in the following summary. I’ll say one good thing for it: the condo has a nice view of the beach. But read on because there are plenty of other places on Fernandina Beach that also have nice views and likely don’t have these issues:
1. Lack of consideration for guests.
Less than ten days after booking the condo and making the first payment, the host contacted us to ask if we were still planning on staying there because they had others interested in it for those dates. I thought this rather off-putting, given that we had already booked it and put money down on the place.
Upon arriving at the gate, we found that the security guard did not have our names on the list. She searched for a while, and in the end was gracious enough to let us through based on an email I showed her.
2. Badly in need of repairs and updates.
Nearly every door would stick and make a loud noise when opening. Not very conducive for good sleep during the night when you have more than one family there. The master bedroom and bathroom doors would barely shut at all. And the sliding glass door to the balcony was very hard to open and made a loud screeching noise when it did. Seems this is not a recent issue. A review from 2017 and others says similar things. Towel racks kept falling off. Turns out this is not a new issue for this unit either as another review from 2017 pointed out. Several blinds were missing in two of the rooms, which made it impossible to sleep in. Unless you want to watch Fox News, you’re not watching TV downstairs. There was no changing it. And the remote for the TV upstairs didn’t work at all.
3. Wrangling about refundable pet deposit.
Before we booked the place, I asked in the inquiry chat if the pet deposit was refundable, and the host said that it was. After our stay, we didn’t see that it had been refunded so I messaged the host asking when we could expect to receive it back. The host’s response was that they didn’t have our deposit but that we should check with VRBO. I did that and, of course, VRBO said the host should refund it. I wrote the host back, but we didn’t hear anything for three days. So I called VRBO, and they touched base with the host and apparently convinced them that they needed to refund it. Granted we did get the deposit refunded, but only after we informed VRBO about the situation.
