It's humbling to have to admit this, but I think I may have to take back some advice I have been giving here. Our last three vacation home rentals have been so wonderful, I felt I could recommend the experience. Something happened a few days ago that may make me change my mind.

I have been researching rentals for our summer trip to Hawaii for a year. Last August, I finally settled on the perfect one, had our dates confirmed, sent a $365 deposit and received a hand-written confirmation. I have been recommending this place on this board to anyone asking about wedding locales on Oahu.

Fast forward to last week. I received an e-mail from a Fodor's reader asking if I had any other phone numbers for this place, as the numbers on the website were not functioning, and neither was their e-mail. Imagine my shock when I could not reach anyone either. For an awful 24 hours I could think about little else. I have been dreaming about this trip and this place for months, even putting a picture of it on my desktop, so I could look at it every day.

I spent half the next day on the phone to Hawaii (from Michigan) trying to track this person down. I called the Better Business Bureau, the Consumer Resources, Bankruptcy Court, on and on. Finally I got her phone number from a wedding caterer who had worked on the estate once. She had moved in with her daughter. Her husband had died, things went wrong and she lost the lease on the property.

She claimed to have tried to send me my money back in February, but "the letter came back". She also claims she is going to send me another check "this week".

This whole experience has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I have since found another house but I'm a little gun-shy. This house (Sunset Hale on Oahu's north shore) is with an agency, however, so perhaps I have a little more protection.

For what it's worth, this note of caution is for anyone considering a private vacation rental. Be sure to reconfirm several times with them before you actually show up on their doorstep. As it is, it was difficult to find a suitable alternative that was still available at this late date. I am just keeping my fingers crossed that this place is OK. God bless the reader that e-mailed me.

Sorry for rambling. I just had to share this with you all.

Maggi, what is the name of this place ?

Maggi,
Sorry to hear about your mess, but thanks for sharing it with the rest of us. We will be doing a house rental the next time we go to Kauai so your experience hits close to home. I will use caution. I hope your horror story has a happy ending! Have a fabulous trip and thanks for all your postings.

Was this place called the Troll Inn?

Very sorry to hear of this mess. Please let us know if you ever get the check. I hope so but realistically I would not expect it. At least it is a fairly nominal amt. but losing ANY money in such a matter would burn me. Thanks for the heads up. Good luck, Larry.

This lesson applies not only to private rentals. Any time you pay for anything in advance you are taking a chance. That includes payments to travel agencies, airlines, and hotels all of which could go into bankruptcy and leave you as an unsecured creditor.

I wonder if you go through an agency, do they generally let you use a credit card in which case you might have some recourse? We have always gone through agencies when renting houses, but I can't recall if they let us charge the down payment.

Here in the state of Hawai`i, the law requires that all vacation rental companies be run by licensed real estate agents.

Failure of a rental company to resolve an issue, can result in the state real estate board revoking the agent's license, and closing the rental company.

Needless to say, I'm a firm proponent of "rent from a company, not from an owner"!

In case you need to pursue collection, you wil need some things in writing.

It sounds like she verbally told you she had tried to send the money back and will resend the money.

If that is the case, you need to get that into writing. You should "confirm your conversation" with her by putting into writing all that she agreed to and mail it to her certified, return recipt. This will help give you a "paper trail". I suggest the letter be friendly and thankful for agreeing to send back your deposit. Be nice, she may have real problems...but you just want your $$$ back.

If in fact, she was attempting to rent something which she didn't legally posses( you said she lost her lease), I beleive that would constitute fraud.

Great legal advice. It's a good thing we have a lawyer on this forum .

Maggi, my heart goes out to you. I know you "do your homework" when it comes to these rentals. I've never had any problem either...but I know NOW I will call several times between booking and travel date to reconfirm.

As for paying with a credit card...by the time you actually arrive at your destination, you've already paid that credit card bill, so what recourse would one really have? Would a credit card company actually refund your money AFTER the fact?

To jor: Once again you're way off base here calling the OP a troll. She's been posting here for ages...why don't you click on a poster's name before you act with ignorance?

I think you can get a refund from a CC purchase after the fact. I did it once when a purchase on ebay went wrong and did get my money back after proving fraud. I kept all the mails from the seller and had him dead to rights so it was pretty easy. I hope Maggi has proof. Just goes to show the need for all agreements in writing. I do not know about the time limit for making a claim however. Again, good luck.

We have had wonderful luck with vacation rentals until our most recent adventure. We reserved a place on Kauai last november for our vacation at the end of June. Once we checked out the flight times and connections with 3 kids and a senior we decided to change our stay to Oahu. We cancelled our reservation well before christmas and have YET to receive our deposit back, over 3 months now. In January she told me that they had already rerented the property for all of the days we had booked. We were months within the cancellation policy and the deposit from the other people was in place. We have had the check in the mail story twice, not received either. We are getting close to filing a suit against them. The next place we reserved was with a very nice man, and a reputable company, the problem was all of a sudden the owner decided to sell the property, leaving us again out on the beach. We have found a 3rd house, given our deposit and are hoping for the best. I wish there was a VRBOreviews website for people to post their experiences. If you email VRBO they will give you any report on complaints etc., but I wish there was something that people could leave reviews of the property and administration so people could spend their hard earned vacation money wisely.

tahjai,

You are being much too lenient with the owner that has told you , "the check is in the mail". You need to step up the pace. A lawsuit is not practical because of the costs involved.

Regarding the second house that the owner decided to sell..

If you had a written lease for that specific house you had a strong bargaining position. Since the lease obligation "went with the house", the new owner would have been obligated to rent to you. As a practical matter, the seller probably would have covered the extra costs for you to rent elsewhere so as not to "kill the sale" of his house.

Message: Dick

Thank you for your reply, We weren't sure if we would have any rights with the second property, even though we did have a signed agreement. We were so worried about not having a place to stay we moved on, The agent was very prompt about returning our deposit, and we have found another place, not as good for location, but a nicer "home". As for stepping it up, I'm not sure how to other than a suit to recover costs. Any suggestions? I don't want to be rude or she may never return the funds

Maggi, good luck to you and I hope you get your money back. Have you tried contacting the local Convention and Visitors Bureau?

Out of curiousity, why would you recommend a place where you've never stayed? Not only did it take you down the wrong path but you could have taken others?

Dick, please stop dispensing legal advice when you don't have a clue what you are talking about.

Rusty,

And how exactly do you know that Dick doesn't know what he's talking about???

Thanks, iamq, jacketwatch, gotravel, and joan (my Hawaii friend), for the good wishes. I will let you all know how it turns out. She did "promise" to send me a check this week. It definitely wasn't a "scam". I talked to several Oahu caterers who have worked at the estate for weddings and such and vouched that they had been in business for 17 years.

If you look back at my previous posts you will see that I didn't "recommend" it per se, just passed on the info to people looking for wedding sites on Oahu. But I did feel I needed to give a "heads up" to my friends here after this fiasco.

I did have a paper trail which unfortunately doesn't help me much if the lady has no money or has gone bankrupt. The people at Visa said it would be a long process but seemed to think that I could still contest the charge, even after all this time.

Even though this was a sombering experience, it will not deter me from renting in the future. The payoff will be sometime this summer when the four of us are sitting in our two bedroom, two and a half bath beachfront cottage with the water 20 feet from our porch (the whole house is $300 a night) instead of a hotel room. Granted, we will not have a maid come in to make the beds and we will have some of our meals on the porch instead of in a restaurant, but that just makes me feel more at home.

I'm just going to chalk this one up to fate and keep going. I'll try to take Auntie Maria's advice on using an agency, although I can't promise. There are some mighty fine rentals out there on vrbo.com. Mahalo everyone.

This story makes me glad I use agencies. I am in Florida now on vacation, and I rented through an agency that has AAA and BBB ratings. I fugred if they messed up, I would have recourse as they obviously want to keep those ratings. I paid a bit more than I would have renting through an individual or via VRBO, but the peace of mind is worth it. Plus, when we got to the house there were a few kinks to work out and the company sent someone right over.