Gorgeous LUX Entire Home in Bethesda 7Bedrooms - 8Beds♡

We never stayed!

1.0

− We walked in to this property and immediately turned and left. The house was dirty and every sitting surface was covered in stains. The fridge was covered in black mold, the oven had enough grease to start a fire, and the outside looked dilapidated. The bricks on the front stoop were loose and my daughter fell and got hurt. The patio door wouldn’t open to the patio which was a fire hazard. The cushions on the patio were stacked and moldy, the fence was broken, the patio screen was ripped. The owner was rude and wouldn’t help us. He told me that these were all aesthetic problems and that the house was “perfect and gorgeous”. He refuses to cancel our booking and took all our money. Booking.com was also unhelpful and wouldn’t do anything to help us. We have to take legal action to go after this scam artist.

Think twice - nice location, plenty of space, deferred maintenance and difficult owners

3.0

On the plus side, the bedrooms are spacious, most of the beds seemed comfortable, the bedding was good quality. The kitchen was well equipped with pots and pans, etc. (though there were no paper products like paper towels). And it's in a great location.

− The primary negative was the owner (Jose) who was extremely unresponsive. We called the phone number provided at least six times and never received a callback. We Emailed multiple times, messaged through Booking multiple times and got one terse Email response and that's it. We had a pre-stay crisis where the guest of honor (our 99-year-old dad) came down with COVID and was quarantined. The owner refused to work with us on a rain check (and wouldn't call us back or respond to Email to even discuss it). Booking referred us to the owners who were unresponsive. This house is also available for rent on VRBO and Airbnb - same property so you'd assume same people and policies but that does not seem to be the case. We messaged through those sites too and someone named Tony responded right away and said he'd be willing to do a rain check so we could reschedule but Jose (through Booking) was terrible, never responded, and would not work with us. If you do decide to book this property, do it through another site. It will be worth the few hundred dollars more to communicate with someone who actually seems to care about customer service. The house itself was OK (since we had to pay for it, we used it anyway, even without Dad) though there are many deferred maintenance problems and issues that suggest that the owners truly do not care about guest comfort or the quality of the experience. For example, the downstairs jail cells (I hesitate to call them bedrooms) have no tables. There's no overhead light in at least one of these so-called bedrooms and the only lamp is perched on the window ledge. Really, they can't afford a night table? How hard is that? The dining room chairs are filthy and falling apart; one had a leg that was collapsing. There was dirty laundry in the closet, peeling paint in the bathroom. The screen-porch was a mess. The freezer is truly filthy with dead shrimp, bits of food, bottle caps, etc. behind the main compartment. Yuk.

Exceptional

10.0