I secured a VRBO rental through Barefeet Rentals at the Mariner's Club in Key Largo. I utilize VRBO’s service quite a bit and this trip is our fourth booking since February 2022. We are South Florida natives and have spent countless weekends vacationing to the Florida Keys. That being said, we have never had the experience we had these past few days. We arrived in Key Largo, had lunch, visited Robbie’s and ultimately arrived at the Barefeet Rental office around 2:30pm. We were informed that check-in would probably be late, as late as 5pm, due to cleaning that was taking place. Upon entering the unit around 4:20 I noticed that things were not as clean as I would expect. There were crumbs on the kitchen table, long dark hairs on the comforter in one of the guest bedrooms and even a ‘hygienic liner’, typically found in the crotch of new women’s underwear/bathing suit bottoms, stuck to the wall near the Master bedroom. Honestly, after a day of travel and ‘time-killing’ I didn’t want to discuss these issues with the rental office and let the subpar conditions go. The Wifi was not functioning properly during our stay and on Wednesday 7/29 I did call the rental office to see what could be done about that. The woman who answered the phone suggested unplugging the router (which we had difficulty finding - perhaps provide details in the unit as to where this is??). We did as she suggested; and as a result some of us had service while others still not. Our 2 college-aged children were forced to use my husband’s work hotspot to completed their on-line test/assignments for their summer coursework. Again, an inconvenience, but not horrific. The ‘nail in the coffin’ came when I was packing up to leave and started itching on my ankles and arms. I pulled back the covers on the bed and found what appeared to be bed bugs. I attached pictures of the bugs and bites in an email to Barefeet. What’s worse is that when I reported the findings I am certain I was lied to regarding the presence of the pests. I was assured that a pest control company came out and did not find any bed bugs and that my bites were a result of noseeums which they definitely were not. I was told to write an email and ask for compensation, if that is what I am seeking. As far as compensation goes, I wasn’t really seeking that, only to have Barefeet
take responsibility for the issues associated with the house which they did not. This property was about $1000/night and was not a ‘grand’ experience.