Southern Vacation Rentals — Local services in Navarre

ZERO STARS

Interacting with Southern Vacation Rentals has been horrible. We stayed at one of their rentals in Panama City Beach and had an unacceptable week. Major issues included -Black mold in the dishwasher -Black mold in the bathtub, tub not draining, no tub stopper -Black mold in the stand up shower -Black mold on AC vents -Large, swarming wasps nest above the deck -Uneven and broken deck boards -Broken deck access gate with exposed screws, unable to be locked making the backyard unsecure There were several other issues including burnt out or missing light bulbs, stained and taped up mattress, broken furnace door, broken laundry room door, access to the beach had an overgrown walk way with several thorn bushes.

Within 24 hours of checking into the rental we notified the Southern Vacation Rentals of these issues. We included photos through their messaging service. We also called to confirm the status of the issues. The first day they said that someone would come by to clean and they would contact pest removal. Pest removal might not have time to come that day but would happen on the next day if not. Someone came by to clean within a couple hours so we were hopeful things would go well but they did not. All they did for the dishwasher mold was spray a little cleaner on it and run it with an empty cleaning cycle. This is something we had already done ourselves. This did not resolve the mold issue. For the bathtub mold they did replace the shower curtain and cleared the stoppage. However, they did not give us a drain stopper. This was the only tub in the rental and we have two small children who need baths. The stand up shower still had mold after the cleaning. AC vents still had mold. A pest removal person never showed up at all. We didn’t bother with the smaller issues as those didn’t strongly impact us or would have taken too long to resolve on this trip. The next day we checked back in to tell them what was not solved. We advised them there was still mold and that no one had taken care the wasps. At this time, we requested to be moved to a different property as several similar ones were available for our date through their company. They said the policy was they had 24 hours to resolve any issues but that it might be possible after that if things weren’t resolved. So, we waited a third day for all this and nothing happened at all. For the remainder of our 8 day stay, no one ever came back again. Nothing for the mold, wasps, or any other issues. No one contacted us to see if there were still issues either.

For the rest of the week, we had to hand wash dishes to avoid mold getting on any of our dishes. We eventually had to buy disposable items as well. We paid for a useable dishwasher and never got a healthy, safe one to use. We had to wash our children as best as we could to avoid the mold by holding them in the shower and the drain stopper never go delivered either. The back deck area was mostly unusable as well. We couldn’t spend time on it or use the grill that was provided either. The deck as was supposed to be our direct beach access for the rental as well. This meant we had to leave the rental and go far away to a public beach access if we safely wanted to get to the beach. We had to deal with all this all week without any other contact or help from them. The only other time they reached out to us was the generic how was your stay texts on our last day.

After our stay was over, I contacted them again to let them know my displeasure with the stay. This call might have been more irritating than the issues in the rental. Some company manager told me that the wasp nest was removed after we had left. What good does that do me and my family once we are gone? Additionally, he said that these problems didn’t significantly impact us and downplayed all of them. These are literal health and safety issues that we had to live with every single day we were there. I could not have felt less heard or helped through this process. Once they got our money for the stay, they completely...

Beware of the following when you rent this unit and any property managed by Southern Vacation Rentals (SVR). We rented this unit for a family vacation: mom, dad, and two infants. I’ll say the unit has a very convenient location, it is beachfront, and apparently SVR expects this will make up for all the issues this property has and their terrible customer service. As I mentioned, the check in was after 4:00 PM. We arrived around 4:30 PM. When we unloaded our things and the kids from the car we went to the front desk to get our parking permit. We went upstairs and as soon as we entered the unit we felt the high humidity and you could even smell it, like if the unit was closed and no maintenance had been done in a very long time. Everything was wet, even the toilet paper! We immediately called SVR, but it was already after 5:00 PM. We explained the issues with the unit and the fact that we had two infants with us, we requested to change units immediately or get a refund. The person on the call told us that, since it was after hours (just 1 hour after check in), the only thing they could do was to create a work order and the property manager was going to be in the unit the next day “first thing in the morning”…imagine driving with two infants for 5 hours to get to a place like this. The next morning I texted the property management company, SVR, at 7:30 AM, they said they will contact the property manager and get back to me with an ETA. After several text messages and a phone call, a maintenance technician came at around 3:00 PM (first thing in the morning, right?)… all morning and part of the afternoon lost waiting for this person to arrive. The tech told us that the issue with the humidity was very common in beachfront units (more reason to do frequent maintenance to the A/C), he asked if he could put a spray in the A/C to mitigate the bad smell, we told him that as long it was not harmful for the kids, it was ok. He confirmed it was not harmful and put the spray in the A/C. An hour passed by after the tech left and SVR did not reached out to us, I contacted them again, they told me that the tech had “solved” the issue and that what he did would help for a couple of days… just the time they needed to get rid of us. To get rid of that bad smell, they would have to replace the entire A/C ducts. That needs time and money, two things they are not willing to do, apparently. This property management company was aware of the issues with the property and that we were traveling with two infants, the chose not to help and put a patch that did not help at all with the smell, much less with the high humidity (not that this spray will help at all for that). The point is, they knew the issues and chose not to help us. Even more concerning is the fact that the unit was supposed to be cleaned before we arrived, I’m 100% sure that the person who cleaned the unit felt the bad smell and the humidity, one would think that the right thing to do was to report it, a good property management company would have switch us to a different unit even before our arrival, then again, Southern Vacation Rentals is not a good property management company. What was supposed to be a good short vacation became a nightmare thanks to SVR. We will stay away from any properties managed by this company from now on. I hope this review is useful for someone else trying to rent this property. If you are traveling with kids, stay away. If you don’t mind the high humidity to the point you can feel it in the air, this is for you. The review might be long, but it does not convey the stress and frustration we felt just from dealing with this company and being in this unit. SVR, I really hope you solve all the issues, for the sake of the next guests, but I doubt...

The house was very nice and accommodates a large family very well. All the beds are very comfortable.

The bunk room is nice and the beds are very comfortable but as someone has already mentioned, having a room that sleeps 14 (almost half the house) and not even a half bath available to them at night is an issue. Luckily we only had 7 people in that room and we managed.

The air conditioning in the bunk house quit working the first night. They sent someone out promptly on Sunday. Luckily my son was there and the guy showed him how to reset the unit. He said they had been called out multiple times over the past few weeks. The unit needs to be replaced. We had to reset it 13 times while we were there.

Would be nice to have a hose to rinse off with right there where you come into the pool from the driveway. Most people just came in from the beach and into the pool without going around the side of the house first.

The kitchen is stocked pretty well. We cooked in every night. There were no pitchers. We bought a couple gallon jugs and left them.

The carriage house was nice for the two sets of grandparents. Wasn’t sure how we would like having to go outside and up the steps, but it actually worked out really nice and we had our own living area over there.

It is only a short walk to the beach, which wasn’t bad. The golf cart was nice to get your things over but after about 11 or 12 o’clock there will not be a parking space for it so you end up having to walk. The beach is pretty crowded in that area. A couple of our people would go over very early in the morning to get us set up. The complementary umbrella and two chairs were even further down the beach. So that wasn’t much use for us.O

Everything was very nice and my only reason for giving it a four star instead of five was the issue we had with the golf cart. First of all, make sure you take care of this before your arrival. That was my fault for not doing that. I missed that in the email. Trying to do it after we got there cost me a whole day on the beach. They kept sending me waivers to a company that did not even have a golf cart at this location, so it kept getting denied. But guest services still kept sending the same waiver. I finally had to figure it out for them that it was a different company. Then they sent me to a different company, which was not correct. It was their sister company.. So it took a lot of work on my part to get to the right person to be able to get the code for the golf cart. I had to keep calling them back. It was very frustrating.

Their guest services is really nice and being able to text them when there’s an issue was very helpful. And they usually got back very quickly. But obviously they did not have the correct information in the file about the golf cart - which is unfortunate. Hopefully they have got that corrected but in case they haven’t, the company is NOT La Dolce Vita. It is LIV Adventures. Just call them directly if you need to.

All in all, this is a very nice house and accommodated us very well. We would definitely consider staying again when we come...