Coldwell Banker Real Estate The Vacation from Hell Ocean City Maryland

On 7/13/08, I rented Excalibur 603, 132 & Coastal Highway, Ocean City, MD. I rented this unit from Coldwell Banker. The rental was for Saturday, August 16 through Saturday, August 23, 2008 (7 nights). The cost was $1,721.71. The rental was made for myself, my fianc our two children and two of their friends (4 teenagers). I have attached the rental listing for your reference. Please note that it is advertised to sleep 6. I am disputing $700.00 of this charge. Listed below are the reasons why.

This property is listed as Oceanside. That is incorrect. The correct term for the positioning of this building is Oceanblock. When renting this unit, I asked the rental agent, Karen Sutton, if this property sat longways with the views being of North and South Coastal highway. She said yes and that the view from my unit would be of South Coastal Highway. When we arrived, we found the building faced Coastal Highway, but the balcony faced the ocean. Not a bad set-up; I just wished to have had a truthful answer during the reservation process.

Upon arrival, we found the condo unit pleasant and clean. We thought we were going to have a fabulous vacation. On Sunday after coming from the beach late afternoon, we decided to all get showers and go to dinner. Two of the children got warm showers, I got a lukewarm shower, my fianc and the remaining two children took cold showers. It took two hours for the hot water heater to again produce hot water. I called the emergency number for Coldwell Banker and spoke to Nate. He told me since the water heater was not flooding, he could not provide emergency service. I asked for it anyway because I thought the hot water heater was broken. He said no, but that someone would call me first thing in the morning when they opened at 9 AM.

On Monday morning, no one from Coldwell Banker called. I waited until 10:30 AM and found out that there was no message left that I had called the emergency number the previous evening. After explaining my problem and getting nowhere with the person who answered the phone, I asked to speak to a supervisor. At that point, I was able to speak to Chris who was a Coldwell Banker manager. She said that she could have a repair person look at it, but that it was probably not worth it because the hot water heater had just been replaced and it was a smaller unit than was there before. She also told me that small hot water heaters used all over Ocean City. She said it was normal for 2 to 2-1/2 showers to be available when the hot water heater was full. She said it would be a 25-30 minute recovery time until the next people would be able to get showers. I explained to her that this unit was advertised as sleeping six people, so it stands to reason that six people could get showers (provided they are short). I told her we came here as a family and wanted to enjoy activities as a family. With this kind of problem, it would be impossible to get ready to go to dinner unless we started at 2 PM in the afternoon. I told her this was unacceptable and that I expected her to rectify the situation. She said she would call the owner and speak to her. In the meantime, I was able to speak to Karen Sutton, the rental agent, who said she was unable to help me at all. Chris called me back a little later saying she had spoken to the owner. The owners comment was that the hot water heater was new, in perfect working condition and that there was nothing she could do. I told her she needed to speak to the owner again as I would go to the Better Business Bureau with this issue if I was not put in another condo with a larger hot water heater or refunded a good portion of the money I paid. Chris told me I refused to have someone to come and look at the hot water heater, when in fact I was told it would be useless because it was new. She called the owner again. This time the answer was that the owner would refund $20/day for our inconvenience. I told Chris this was unacceptable and that I felt it was money being offered for me to keep quiet about a situation that should not have happened. Chris made light of the situation saying that the recovery time to replace the hot water was 15 minutes (interesting that she said it was 25-30 minutes in an earlier conversation). Real time is two hours. I then asked for a repair person to be sent and was told by Chris that the offer for that was off the table. I asked about being relocated and was told that Coldwell Banker would not do that for me. The option being given was that I could leave Excalibur 603 and be refunded a pro-rated amount for time left on the rental. I had 20 minutes to make a decision and two hours to vacate. I told Chris that I could not find a place to stay in 20 minutes. She recommended packing my car and driving around to look for a place to stay. When she called back in 20 minutes, I told her we could not get together that quickly, that we would stay and make the best of a horrible situation. I told Chris that we would do the right thing keep the condo clean, take care of it and leave it in good repair. I reminded her that refusing to help me was the wrong decision and that I would be taking this to as many authorities as will listen.

During our stay, we had occasion to talk to other tenants and owners. Not one person had the issues that we had. The owners said they used good size hot water heaters to make sure there is enough hot water. We also had occasion to make calls to other condominiums. It is in no way standard to put a sub-size hot water heater in a condominium. It is not standard practice. Chris lied to us about so many things and this was just another.

The hot water heater in Excalibur 603 fit underneath the kitchen counter. Either it is way too small (most probable) or it was malfunctioning. $20 per day for us to not be able to enjoy things as a family was unacceptable. Had the refund offer been reasonable to reflect the quality of service we received, we would have accepted it and dropped this issue.

Chris did not care, the owner did not care and Coldwell Banker did not care. These people ruined our vacation and got away with it. What I am asking you to do is to hold them responsible for their negligence.

Lori
Havertown, Pennsylvania
U.S.A.

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