Absolutely Melnq8. Bizarre indeed.

iamq, did you hear back from the owner???

Nope. I have not heard anything, which is not unusual for this person. Last year, when I was arranging for the rental, a few days would go by between and then I'd hear from her.

I will be sure to let you all know when I do hear from her.

Still haven't heard and have decided not to pursue it.

This is appauling. I rent out my house in Maine on homeaway.com and would NEVER consider listing a gratuity. I tip my house cleaner quite well at the end of the season...as it should be.

This is a sad story. I remember your enthusiasm for the property last year and even tried to find it when I was on Maui in May. My decision would be the same as yours, though, to not pursue. The slow response to emails is a deal breaker for me. What if you had a problem while renting and couldn't reach anyone? The gratuity thing is so ridiculous I have been thinking it must be a mistake or something!

Hi Barbara, yeah we are very disappointed. I don't think it is a mistake. If it were you would have thought I'd have heard back from her by now so she could make sure I had the real story. I do know the property has been in the same family for generations and that there was a death of either the matriarch or patriarch last year, so maybe someone else is running the financials on the property. Who knows?

We just sealed a deal on a rental in Hanalei for next summer though and are thrilled. It is a guest house for a large estate on the beach side of Weke Road and we'll have access to the beach in like 20 seconds. The price was right and the location is really our first love.

Well, I finally heard from the owner and here is part of her message. Basically she blames being incommunicado on a crashed computer and the information in her ad on HomeAway's change in format.

"You aren’t the first to ask about the HomeAway listing and the rates/gratuity fee. It appears they changed/upgraded (they say) their “dashboard” and the all the different rates were not visible and a gratuity fee added. There is no gratuity fee."

She is offering us the house at the same rate that we paid in February. Good to know that there is no gratuity and no cleaning fee and since we would be returning guests we would pay the same amount we did last time, but the daily rate did go up $25 a day for first timers.

Now that we've found a place in Hanalei, we're not sure what to do. Good news is that we don't have to put any money down on the Hanalei house until January.

Maybe a week at each place???

I'm glad this got sorted but I'm not sure if I buy her explanation. However, at least she offered you the "same" rate as in the past!

Let's just say this interaction has not engendered a feeling of trust with the home's rental agent/owner/representative.

Let it go - there are thousands of other options...

bardo1, while there may be "thousands" of options island wide, there are actually only 3 or 4 options for vacation rentals in this area of Maui. We liked this one the best.

We've decided to stick with our plan to head to Kauai instead. It has been 4 years since we'eve been there and it is calling.

I have been reading this with interest as I am a vacation rental homeowner in CO. We hired a new cleaning service 3 years ago when our cleaner moved away. I found out a few months after they started that the cleaners were leaving tip envelopes. I told the cleaning service owner I thought it was tacky and reflected poorly on us. They might think we didn't pay the cleaners well.

I think the owner did this as a way to recruit cleaners and/or pay them less, but I am not sure. We pay her $25/hour and I don't know what she pays her cleaners. I decided to let it go after emailing many past guests and surprisingly most saw nothing wrong with it and the ones who didn't like it just said they didn't leave a tip.

1 1/2 years later I added a $100 cleaning fee per stay, which doesn't cover our actual cleaning cost. I did this in lieu of raising the rate, and because most other properties in the area were doing it.
I would never require a gratuity nor would I add a cleaning fee and raise the rate in the same year.

Let me add that I have heard similar stories from owners on sites like homeaway -- that the form filled out by the owner was confusing and contained elements not pertinent to the particular property. Maybe her story isn't so farfetched, since hers is a new listing on homeaway and she may have been unfamiliar with the listing process.

Believe me, I'm a real skeptic and tend to think the worst about these matters, but this has a slight ring of truth to it.