Horrible customer service and subpar rental property
A lot of things went awry when my family and I rented a home in Calpe, Spain from Interhome in July 2023. I sent a complaint to Interhome back then, but I have still to receive a reply, so I will post my complaints here so everyone can see the terrible experience we had (and are still having) with Interhome.
Our stay at Villa Florencia immediately started off bad. We were 14 people staying at the property, and we arrived with the hopes of having a relaxing holiday. Instead, we spent most of our holiday having to contact Interhome with new problems, and on top of this, we also had to constantly manage the Interhome employees who claimed they would follow up on the reported problems, but they very rarely did. It was always me who had to contact Interhome when they ultimately failed to update us despite their many promises to do so, and when they eventually sent someone to look at the reported issues, it was always belated and it was never communicated to us when or if they would stop by the house. "Too little, too late" seems like it should be Interhome's slogan.
When we first arrived at the property, the wifi was not working, the whole house was dirty and smelled of mold with a bonus of many black flies camping in the cellar bathroom (I have attached photos at the end of this email of some of our feet from us simply walking inside the house), the pool was filmy with dirt, two ACs in two bedrooms weren't working properly, and we soon also noticed the overall subpar quality of the furniture and the lack of equipment in the kitchen (most of the glasses were chipped and even broken, and most of the plates were dirty and dusty). Neither were there any basic commodities in place, such as toilet paper and hand soap in the bathrooms. After calling Interhome, they did send a washing lady to clean the floors and the shared bathrooms (the ones that smelled the most of mold and sewer), and they said they would fix the wifi, but failed to do so on this day, and we never received any updates on this until I called them the following day. During our first night we also reacted on the old mattresses that felt about as comfortable as the tile flooring and the bedsheets smelled anything but freshly washed. The beds were so uncomfortable that the people in my family who had their camping vans parked nearby decided to sleep in their vans instead of the beds in the rented house.
Throughout the week, we experienced new problems every single day, and the main issues were the smell of mold and sewer in the basement (which strongly affected the people sleeping on that floor), the horrible wifi (Interhome sent us a new modem earlier in the week, but this one only worked when we were in the same room, so we didn't have wifi in the entire house like we paid for), and the obvious lack of upkeep and replacement of outdated furniture. The beds were uncomfortable, the chairs (especially the ones in the living room) were unstable and one of them even broke just from sitting on it normally, the tables were flaking paint and wobbly, the sunbeds were hard plastic with no pillows or mattresses provided, there were only two beach umbrellas that had to be shared between 14 people (and one of them broke early in the week, so the rest of the week we only had one beach umbrella to share). I have attached pictures at the end of this email of most of these instances, as well as pictures of a broken refrigerator door (which we were promised Interhome would fix, but that never happened).
To top it all of, on our last day, all the ACs on the middle floor stopped working, and the two ACs that had not been working properly all week were still not fixed. Interhome told us early in the week that they would send a technician to look at the ACs, but nobody came. To Interhome's credit, they did clean the pool, they cleaned the dirty floors, and they sent someone to check the smell in the basement (but the smell was never fixed).
I have made numerous calls to Interhome throughout our stay, mostly their employees working at the office in Calpe, and I found the customer service to be terrible. Although the employees acted helpful and nice, the reality was that I had to contact them several times about the same problem before getting any actual help where someone came to physically look at the problems I reported. The employees asked me if I wanted their manager to call me, to which I said yes, but the manager never called me or came to the property to follow up on the issues we had, which frankly is quite unprofessional. This whole ordeal was unacceptable from beginning to end.
As any contract implies, adequate services should be provided in exchange for the customer's money, but this term was clearly breached throughout our stay. I hope this complaint reaches the right people despite Interhome's continuous lack of follow-through thus far.
