The pictures of the 6 bedroom villa on the website run by Michael Degler (an expat from England) and Mark Alleyne (a DR citizen living in NY) promised heavenly pleasure for our group of three families. We had also rented another smaller house to accommodate the overflow, but counted on the villa to serve as a central rallying point in a small resort town on the northern shore of the Dominican Republic.
But the reality was quite different. These hustlers had clearly sold us a bill of goods as we learned. The first night we noted the seductively appealing jabecausezi was broken and filled with tadpoles in the residual water left from the rain. Many appliances didn't work (coffee maker, advertised computer and broadband access, toilets etc.) and their was a broken bed that sagged in the middle.
Then it got really bad. Despite the fact that DR suffers frequent brownouts and virtually all rental property owners employ backup generators, these guys declined to provide this for house advertised as a luxury villa. Instead they relied on a system of batteries, most of which didn't work when we arrived. It took most of the week for them to acknowledge that and replace them.
Also the owner and the agent declined to provide us with normal contact information to relay this information to the owner until the day before we were to leave. They have never provided their mailing addresses.
But wait it gets worse. Several times during the week, we were left without access to potable water in the "villa from hell." In fact after several brief water cutoffs at the house for the three families, we were cutoff completely for the last two days.
One family left after the first night with airline quoting a $3800 surcharge to leave early from the island.
When the agent finally provided a telephone number for the owner (after the property manager refused to provide this information), the owner initially answered the phone and denied he owned the villa or that he knew the agent who had rented the house to us. Only after repeated calls over 14 hours did he finally own up. I suspect he finally answered the call to him after the following.
Yes, here we go again. After the families went out to dinner as we had no water or electricity in the house on the last evening of our stay, we returned near midnight and found the whole first floor of the villa flooded. We had left the maintenance man and the house manager at the house alleged working on the electric and the water prolems. Apparently he got the water working but the pump applied two much pressure and caused damage to a toilet leaving water spread over the entire first floor of the villa. Our guess is that they decline to check the house before they left. We called the house manager and she never answered, so we called one of the owners repeatedly in New York to tell him of the situation. After leaving a desperate message he still failed to return the call. After one more call to the owner, he answered and admitted who he was. Of course this was after we had spent hours clearing out water which had left one bedroom unusable.
The house manager and maintenance who caused the damage showed up hours later and wanted to enter the house around 1 or 2 am. I declined their offer since all that could be done had been done and the plumber who had been promised 3 days earlier never graced our villa while we were there.
The saga continues and we plan to post pictures of this villa on you tube and contact all travel agents, consumer complaint organizations, embassies (US and DR) and law enforcement authorities about these guys over the next few months.
Bottom line stay away from these guys. Don't rent from anybody who won't give you an actual mailing address (particularly for the owner). There are probably more lessons to be learned but that will be another chapter in this saga,"Dominican Republic Villa: Heaven or Hell". My vote is Hell. Check the website we have created to get updates on this story. www.villaparthenon.inf
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