Evolve — Local services in Denver

I have been a short-term vacation rental owner for over 6 years. Last year I purchased a house from someone that used Evolve as their management group. I decided to try them out as well as the house already was listed through this company. It was the worst mistake I made.

I have never met a company that has shown such a lack of care for their owners. It almost feels as if they blame the owner for any issues the tenants create. This company does not cover or warranty anything that is broken or damaged under $50. That means, towels, silverware, etc. will not be covered. They will not cover anything that has been stolen. Again, if someone steals a towel, rug or silverware, they will not cover these items. In addition, if you inform them a guest has a pet, not only will they not cover the damage from the pet, but they require photographs showing the pet was on the property. The photos of the excess dog hair and the chew marks on the furniture should be enough. With regards to items they do cover, they require not only the purchase but a copy of your credit card statement or bank statement showing the money has left your account. It is such a joke. It felt like I was constantly under attack as an owner. It is stressful enough when a guest damages items, but then to have to jump through extra hoops to get paid from them, is too much.

When I would call to express my concerns, they wouldn't call back. They would send an email back. To me, again, this shows a lack of empathy on their part.

Their owner app is slow to respond or is non-responsive. After 6 months with them and numerous calls expressing the concern on the app, I was finally informed they have a different app to use. This wasn't until I told them to cancel my account with them. Oh, they also want to charge $250 for the photographs of the house. The irony is that they didn't take these photographs for me. The photographs were taken for the previous owner of the home.

The company does not notify via text when guests book either. I was checking my app or the website several times a day as to not miss bookings. In fact, there was a booking the neither myself nor my cleaner (an evolve cleaner) received information on. We just happened to go meet at the house to discuss future ideas regarding the house when we found a guest in the house. It was embarrassing to say the least.

They collect a percentage of all fees as well. They take a percentage of the booking fee (which makes sense to me) but they also take a percentage of the cleaning fee and the pet fee. This doesn't make sense because the cleaning fee is what the cleaner charges me so in order to make the money I need to cover the cleaner, I have to increase the cleaning fee by over 20% which makes these already high prices, higher.

Not only would I NOT recommend this company but I would do anything in my power to stay away from them all together. I am exhausted from being taken advantage of. Oh and when you tell them of issues, they continually change their rules and regulations regarding the issues. When I first signed up, the $50 or less items were covered. They will inform the owner of changes but then if you decide you no longer want any more of their guests, they then charge the owner a $250 or 2x the amount of the booking whichever is greater. That means, they can change the rules at any time and there is nothing you can...

We had no hot water and the dishes weren't clean. We had no way to wash them. We had to boil water and then carefully try to take it upstairs in order to bath. It was like we were on an episode of "Little House on the Prairie". We sent numerous emails to Evolve that were never responded to beginning on the first of our three night stay. After numerous texts, calls and emails we finally spoke to the property manager. He informed us that the owner didn't want to send someone out to fix it but was opting to go through the warranty which would take longer than we were planned to be there. It never was fixed or to my knowledge even attempted to be fixed. I've rarely witnessed such unprofessional behavior from a management company. The lengths that I had to go to speak to anyone or get a response to emails was incredible. Every time I called the rep acted like they had no idea what was happening and we had to start the whole process over again. This happened literally 3 or 4 times. I'll tell everyone that will listen to never rent from this owner as well as Evolve specifically. It was a terrible experience and the worst part is that they refuse to stand and be accountable for their product and refuse to communicate.

*It's comical that I couldn't get you to respond when we had an issue with our rental but I post a review and you respond same day. Regarding your response: 😆Your credit of $184 on a bill of $1,250+ is not fair and not acceptable. You mention that the reason for the low credit is "due to the length of stay being completed and your decision to continue with the reservation regardless of the listed concerns". Really? We didn't get an answer that the owner was choosing not to have someone try and fix the water issue during our stay until late afternoon on the 20th. We checked out at 10 am on the 21st. What were we supposed to do several states away the night before our departure? We didn't know leaving and getting a credit was even an option if we did do that? No one from Evolve not one time offered that option. We were supposed to move elderly people the night before checkout and pray you would credit us the one night in blind faith? You would've kept that money too and if that was an option to us you would've offered it in our numerous phone calls.

The only reason that the length of stay was completed is because it took you that long to act. This is purely a product of your delays to respond. This was an issue on your end and certainly not something I should be penalized for because of your lack of customer service. I'm surprised that this is the best response that you could come up...

We rented a home from Evolve for 4 weeks. We checked in on Saturday evening and right away noticed daddy long legs and had to kill several. By Sunday AM I was communicating with David at Evolve that we had killed 20 spiders. They said that they would send an exterminator company on Monday. Then on Tuesday their handy man shows up with Home Depot spray. He sprayed the entire house and admitted that it needed "bombing" and that the last time he knew of any treatment was last November. Each day waiting for the exterminator we killed at least 25 spiders a day, we couldn't sleep, shower, relax, we were on full alert in every area of the house. The spray on Tuesday made the spiders WORSE. By Wednesday AM, we had killed over 125 spiders. I texted directly with the owner, who admitted that the house had a long time issue, and they were never able to exterminate because it in fact made it worse, it disturbed the spiders and they moved. She said she "thought that she should have treated before our 4 week stay, but didn't want to make it worse". Evolve's response was that this was "normal" for a house in the woods. This is our 6th summer staying in houses in the woods and never have we had spiders like this. This was a total infestation, you couldn't go to the bathroom with having to inpsect and kill several. We spent 4 days of our 4 week stay buying bug spray and fly swatters. It was terrifying. Evolve admitted that it was a safety issue, yet did not fully refund our money. We exited the house on day 4 after the issue getting worse, even had a widow spider, many types. We had photos, many many texts and emails with proof of the known issue. Secondarily, the upstairs windows have no screens, so without being able to open those windows, it was about 90 degrees, which made 2 of the 4 bedrooms unihabitable. My grandchildren were coming up, and they would have encountered 6-10 GIANT spiders in each bathroom DAILY. So we checked out and filed our complaint. Evolve still stands that that is a NORMAL occurance for houses in the woods. This house is just neglected and lots of debris around the perimiter of the house, old windows, wood, junky yard furniture, etc. Once we left, I checked daily, they NEVER removed the house from being rented to fumigate, so if they say they did, they are lying. This house needs some TLC, and to be bombed before anyone else stays. Beware that Evolve did not refund all of our money, for lodging that was not what we paid for and 4...