Rentcottage.com by Cottage Vacations — Hotel in Municipality of Northern Bruce Peninsula

You win some, you lose some.

We have rented three properties with rentcottage.com over several years. One property was good, one excellent, and one terrible. The company always provided excellent service before check-in; but they provided no real service after check-in.

Our first property was a house near Tobermory. It was clean, well-maintained, and quite comfortable for a week. No particular problems.

Our second property was a house on Whitestone Lake. It was large, beautiful, and perfectly maintained. The house offered great lake views in a living room with a cathedral ceiling. It was well furnished with kayaks, canoes, and equipment. We loved the place.

Our third property was a house in Tobermory. It was large, uncomfortable, and badly maintained. We left two days early on a week’s rental because the experience was so unpleasant. At a minimum, the property is significantly overpriced, even during a pandemic year. We reported the problems to rentcottage.com in a phone call and four emails. Also we requested a one-night refund, which is common in the hospitality industry. The company never responded to our call or emails.

Here are some of the problems with this third property: The roof leaked and puddled on the upstairs hallway in the rain. The master fuse panel for the house was a foot above the jacuzzi tub. Several windows had crank handles that didn’t open or didn’t close. One screen window fell out onto the living room floor. Much of the house smelled of strong cleaning chemicals, burnt heating elements, and stale old fabrics. About ten light bulbs were missing or not working. The “rain” shower head dripped cold water onto a person taking a normal hot shower. The house was dark and gloomy, with a strange design. The bedroom walls didn’t go up the ceiling, so sounds carried through the whole house. The third-floor reading nook was supposed to have a comfy chair, but there was only a mattress covered with a ripped sheet. There was a 24-hour power outage, but we couldn’t find any flashlights or candles in the house. Unfortunately there were wood beams at head height in most rooms. During the power outage, we called the property manager listed on the fridge. They were friendly, but they didn’t take any action.

All in all, we’d recommend rentcottage.com if you’re comfortable taking a bit of a gamble. We’ve had both excellent and terrible experiences with...

Child Safety Issues, Privacy Rating, and At A Glance were all inaccurate and misleading on the specific cottage we stayed at.

I see the company has now updated a few of those on their website, without an apology to us.

Besides there being many issues within the cottage itself the company left us without pillows and comforters for the beds. The advertised fireplace didn't work, and when we contacted the owner they told us that it isn't allowed to be used during the summer, even though we rented mid September.

We were told we were not entitled to any money back even though we left after the first night. We drove over 4 hours to get there with 3 small children and our dog, or else we would have just went home after realizing what this cottage is actually like. We expressed to the owners and the rental company that this rental is unsafe for small children, small old dogs, and older people, and that is why we left because we had all of those. The company had us fill out all our information prior to renting this cottage and knew the people/pet we would be bringing.

The owner ignored me and the company told me it is my own fault for renting a cottage with stairs. Stairs is not an issue for our parents, children and dog: normal stairs. Tight, steep, scratchy, spiral stairs, that is not shown in any rental photos, is a different story. The company reassured me that the stairs are to code, which we have a hard time believing.

They said my only option was to have someone rent the cottage for the remainder of the week by contacting the company paying them and then the company would reimburse us. I tried my best every day to drum up interest on Facebook but the company was offering this cottage for full price and I'm to sell it on a last minutes notice. So here I am unsuccessful in re-renting it, out over $2000, no vacation. This is our fifth year in a row renting cottages, from other sites, and we have never had issues like this.

Most of what we experienced was negative and I do not recommend this...

We rented the “Morning Star” property in Tobermory Ontario and although the cottage itself was beautiful had I have known that there were a ridiculous amount of rules upon renting I would never have chosen this cottage. There was no smoking allowed on the property at all, and while I understand no smoking inside the cottage outside is a bit much to ask. There were no water toys, no canoe , life jackets etc.. all were locked away inside owners garage. No DVD player and very few channels for tv. Again I know this is a cottage but for $2,800 a week I would like something to do while I am there. We actually left a day early out of sheer boredom because the weather was bad and there was nothing to do other than sit and stare at each other lol! Now for the leaving part. When you leave this property you are expected to CLEAN! And I don’t mean just normal clean up after yourself I mean clean the cottage! Dust, vacuum, wash the tub and shower, clean toilets, clean kitchen, clean inside oven, clean grill of bbq clean out fire pit, wash windows, doors, door knobs, counters, the list is extensive. Plus I ended up having to buy most of what I need to use to clean the place as it was under stocked. Why this person doesn’t include a cleaning fee in the rental is beyond me. Or it is included and they just want it cleaned before their cleaners come in 🤔 Anyway I will not rent this place again, I felt like I was walking on eggshells the entire vacation. I literally didn’t want my kids to touch anything! I came home more stressed than...