Complaints

The complaint text that is displayed might not represent all complaints filed with BBB. Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business.

• Initial Complaint

  Date:11/13/2024

  Type:Billing Issues
  Status:

  AnsweredMore info

  Complaint statuses

  Resolved:

  The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction.

  Unresolved:

  The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it.

  Answered:

  The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction.

  Unanswered:

  The business failed to respond to the dispute.

  Unpursuable:

  BBB is unable to locate the business.

  When this business was hired to manage my property in Destin, they told me they charged a 20% management fee. No other fees were disclosed upon hire. I have put in a 30 days notice with this company due to the below: When I noticed that we (the owners) were getting paid a small portion of the total revenue (between 11 and 51%) - I asked for a breakdown of how much money - and for what - was getting removed from the revenue ('total Payout') before we got paid. I was given a detailed explanation by their Operations Mgr and was later told by the Owner that the Operations Mgr "was confused" about the breakdown. One fee the Operations mgr said that Grand welcome took was an extra 15% boo**** fee - on every OTA where the unit was listed - to cover certain operating expenses, which was not disclosed to me in the beginning. The owner later said they don't charge that extra 15% boo**** fee. Very confusing. Given that, in order to gain clarity on what was actually being done with the boo**** revenue and how it was calculated, I asked the business to provide a breakdown of the following for all past reservations and for those upcoming in November, so that I could better understand the actual cost of their services and remove the confusion (I sent them an export from my owner portal with the numbers I was using as the basis for the request) 1- I asked them to confirm how 'total payout' was calculated 2- and, to give a breakdown of all money removed from 'total payout' to get to 'owner revenue' I was not given that information. I asked for the financials from the airBNB website for my property's listing and the company refused to give that information claiming it 'violates corporate policy'. I would like the info that I requested. They also charged me $3800 in off-boarding fees, some of which were unwarranted or questionable and/or unreasonably high. I have a detailed email expressing why. I am see**** a refund of $1,000 of those fees.

  Business Response

  Date: 11/13/2024

  Hi BBB,
  Thank you for reaching out on behalf of Jennifer. I have clarified this to Jennifer and I will share it here as well. The contract that Jennifer signed clearly states the boo**** fee, it’s a fee that’s charged by the OTA, each OTA charges different amount. We collect fee amount from the guest and pay it to the OTA.
  

  About the 11 – 51% of the total revenue aspect, again I have clarified this to Jennifer and will share it here. Jennifer was eager to get reservations for her newly acquired property, so instead of letting us be the professional, she dictated to us the nightly rate for her property and it was way below the market rate. However, she is rightly entitled to it, pricing her property the way she would like it. We expressed our concerns about the low nightly rate, and educated her about the outcomes, she still wanted to move ahead with the low nightly rate. Problem is there are fixed costs with every reservation, for instance cleaning fee, when the nightly rate is lowered so much that it is less than 20% of the fixed costs obviously that impacts the bottom line for the homeowner as a percentage. For example, on a reservation for 3 nights, with a nightly rate dictated by the owner at $37/night, the total rent collected would be $111. If the cleaning fee is $200. Not accounting for other things, it's $311 just for the cleaning fee and nightly rate. After all the accounting that’s done on the property, obviously the owner’s cut will be extremely low as a percentage, to the point that it’s not worth to either the homeowner or the property manager.
  

  To the above point, I have also given Jennifer a complete breakdown of a total payout calculation - this is proprietary information which I shared with her in hopes that it will help her understand that we are not ta**** away her revenue. It’s the incorrect choice of low rent that she wanted.
  

  Furthermore, the additional information that Jennifer requested is access to our corporate office’s bookkeeping, I can’t ask my franchising company to reveal their books to me much less to a third party. The franchise company is not obligated to provide those details to me, a franchisee, two separate business entities. I shared this information with Jennifer.
  

  We have gone above and beyond in helping Jennifer set up her property, spent hours without invoicing or charging her preparing her property before onboarding her property. Jennifer is not local and lives multiple states away from her property. So, she purchased all kinds of home improvement items and shipped them to us to assist her. There were so many boxes that we had to store a lot of those boxes in a storage unit. Move the boxes from our place to storage unit. Move the boxes from storage unit to her property when the property was ready to receive the interior items she shipped to us. Of course, not all boxes were shipped in one go, there are hundreds of boxes shipped over multiple weeks. This was constant work on our side to assist her. Now, once these boxes were brought to her property, we unboxed them, assembled them and moved them to wherever she wanted them to go. Other property managers, with similar services would charge thousands of dollars to handle all the above activities.

  Again, it’s mentioned in the contract that she signed, should she choose to leave our program within 12 months, she will be required to pay for the onboarding costs that we haven’t charged her while onboarding.
  

  At this point, there is really nothing new I can provide that I have not already provided to her.
  
  Thank you!

  Customer Answer

  Date: 11/13/2024

  
  Complaint: 22546816
  
  I am rejecting this response because: of the information provided in the attached word document. I see 2 bold faced lies about me and have clear emailed/writing to prove it. Also this has caused an extreme amount of anxiety and depression and has interfered with my day job.
  
  Sincerely,
  
  Jennifer ****

  Business Response

  Date: 11/14/2024

  Great!! Name calling and lack of respect, very mature.  

  Please go back and take a look at all the text messages and emails you sent us. You are nonstop, putting incredible amount of pressure on my team, incessantly telling us how to manage your property. In fact, you were the one stressing out my team and inducing anxiety to the point that they were scared to answer your calls. 

  Before all those emails that you made Ian send you, you had already signed the contract. Please do us all, including yourself, a favor and read the contract you signed. Stop blaming everyone else because you did not care to read the contract you signed. We did everything for you that you wanted, now you are dictating and threatening. Dictating what we should charge you for and not, how we should run a business where you do not have any expertise. Can I walk into a ********* and tell them how much they should charge me for a burger, how they should prepare a burger? No! Please take a chill pill and try to look at your entire interaction with us from a third person perspective, if you are being objective, you will very quickly realize how unreasonable you have been all along.  

  I will respond to the rest of the message later. 

  Customer Answer

  Date: 11/14/2024

  
  Complaint: 22546816
  
  I am rejecting this response because: the business never addressed their erroneous information in the last reply. Instead they sent a response back unprofessionally belittling me and causing more stress. This is harassment on their part.

  Any legit business professional would own their mistakes, especially where I provided evidence in writing. They are clearly avoiding ta**** responsibility.

  
  Sincerely,
  
  Jennifer ****