Lees Real Estate Agency

Review: For the week of July 12 to July 19, I rented a weekly vacation property in Wildwood Crest, NJ at [redacted]0. In my conversation with the leasing agent, [redacted], I expressed my only requirements were a queen sized bed for my wife and I and an in-unit washer/dryer. A property I had originally requested which showed as available was confirmed. Then I was contacted back and informed it was rented by the owners without the leasing agent's knowledge. The second unit did not contain a washer/dryer (which I confirmed) but did have a queen size bed. Upon arriving at the unit July 12 we realized the bed was not queen but full sized. My wife is very tall, and we are accustomed to sleeping in our queen sized bed. I drove back to the rental agency and informed them of the mistake in the bed (as well as an insect problem, the front door having no privacy with the neighboring unit's children actually opening our screen door and peeking into our living room several times, and some outlets not being functional). She told me she'd look into it and contact me. She called a short while later and informed me the owner's were supposed to have a queen size bed delivered that they had ordered but their son must not have realized it was a full, not a queen. She said she'd attempt to rectify the problem and would contact me to update. The rest of the week went by with no phone call. I emailed the agent on the 17th and received no response. This sleeping arrangement was very uncomfortable and inconvenient for my wife and I. We get 1 vacation a year, and we arrived back home at the end of the week more tired than when we had left due to both the owner and leasing agent's mistakes. They made no attempt to fix it or to help us or to even compensate us in some way for the problem. They simply deposited our check and then ignored us.Desired Settlement: Had the leasing agent attempted to help us in anyway, either by acquiring a queen sized bed like the owner had stated they would attempt to do, or offering an alternative property or some value added items to add in our enjoyment during the week if the situation could not be remedied quickly, or even if they had attempted to keep communication with us during the attempt to remedy the situation, I would have been more satisfied than simply being ignored. Our vacation is over and now there is nothing we can do. Our week is over and we aren't getting that back. For not only the inconvenience of the queen sized bed (which was promised in the signed lease agreement) but the lack of customer service we received during our stay, I would like a refund of our rental cost. All I wanted was what we agreed to. They failed to deliver that.

Business

Response:

Complaint received. We will provide a full response by Monday, July 28th. The guest left on 7/19 and the owner had sent an e-mail to our office on 7/19/14 relative to security deposit issues so we needed several days from this past Tuesday's initial filing to gather information together so a full response can be provided. All relative information and the e-mails with dates and time from the owner will be provided on Monday.

Consumer

Response:

I am rejecting this response because:

If the company has an issue with the state the property was left in, they can discuss it with me via their traditional methods of disputing security deposits. I will say the property was left in the same condition we arrived in. In addition, we vacuumed, cleaned the kitchen counter tops, kitchen table, and bathroom prior to leaving the unit. All standard protocol with vacating a rental property. We have rented from agencies in the Ocean City, NJ area the last two years and we received our full security deposit back. The reason we received the full deposit back was because we are honest people and live by a simple principle: Leave it better than you found it. I have no problem providing references from the rental agency we rented with the previous two years.

However, this complaint was not about the state of disarray the property was or was not left in. This complaint was in regards to not receiving what was advertised and not providing an opportunity to rectify the situation. Therefore, the security deposit should not be a condition of delaying a response about what is a black and white issue. We paid for something we did not receive.