Haven Vacation Rentals — Local services in Pigeon Forge

My overall experience with Haven was a rather difficult and costly experience. It took my new cleaning and maintenance a total of about 4 days worth of work to get the place ready for the first guest from both a cleanliness, safety, and repair/replacement perspective. I believe with additional attention to detail on Haven's behalf, much of this could have been avoided.

The offboarding process: I lost two of the four previously booked clients because Haven didn't take the immediate action to contact AirBnb so those customers were not receiving a full refund. They stated in a message, "we were having a major ordeal with the previous management company and booked a different place through another app". This cost a lot of money in lost rental revenue.

Simple items such as replacing a TV went on for weeks and weeks with excuse that "claims through insurance take extended periods of time." At the time I said I was switching, the claim suddenly processed.

I had paid for the interior designers to fully make the beds with, comforters etc. I now have three of my comforters missing and they had to be repurchased and replaced for the new guest. - I followed up with Haven and still have not received a response.

I received a rather damning negative review a few weeks after paying for a supposed deep clean where renters stated cobwebs, dirty windows, and the fact their feet turned black from walking on the floor. Haven stated that a deep clean was completed and sent me photos that appeared to be from maintenance, none of which demonstrated that a deep clean was completed. This was $650 out of pocket an I do not believe a legitimate deep clean occurred.

Major safety issues: Both of my doors leading to the indoor pool did not have functional locking mechanisms which could have been a major liability for both Haven and I. They were originally self closing hinges installed for inspection but it appears that someone pulled the pins in the mechanism. I have now paid a maintenance person to replace all of the hinges as well as the alarms and auto locking mechanisms Simple items like propane for the grill and fire pit were never addressed. These simple items are where you get dinged big in reviews. I had a dining room chair that was damaged/broken but no mention of it had ever occurred. New management immediately flagged all of these and they are now handled.

Overall though, the most costly aspect of this whole ordeal, was the bookings. The frequency at which this property is booking has increased dramatically from day one since switching and the dollar rate at which its booking has also climbed quite a bit. I don't believe there was enough active management going on with the property, either from a booking perspective or from a maintenance perspective.

I've been trying to keep tabs on all the items I've had to pay since the transition as well as the lost bookings and my poor choice to utilize Haven's services cost me approximately $5,000.

For me it was a sad experience especially being a brand new first time property owner. I was excited for months leading up to the opening of the cabin to work with Haven because I had received a positive recommendation and Dennis was very proactive in following up regularly. Unfortunately as soon as things got started and I was transitioned to the management side of business, that stopped.

Attached you'll see the review that really woke me and to acknowledge the need for a change.

I see a lot of positive reviews so I'm hoping my experience is simply a one-off. 🤞 I also know that reviews wake up businesses and I would like Haven to remain successful. Since I received no response from the detailed write up I provided them upon exit, perhaps this will catch their attention and encourage a shift...

We stayed at the location at 2587 Windfall Estates Dr. “The Whiskey Stone” Upon arrival, even though their rental agreement says no glitter or confetti, we were hit with a barrage of red and silver glitter, with Christmas Ornaments of the same color in the trash can. There were ornament hooks and pieces of a fake Christmas tree all over the floor. Checking over everything, there was no running water to the bathroom or kitchen sink, or the toilet. There were dead bugs in plain view on one of the living room end tables and window. Dust everywhere. Checked the hot tub and the water was filthy and wasn’t working properly. The stove said “bad line” and wouldn’t turn on. I messaged my Airbnb hosts immediately with all of these issues, and repeatedly got messages in return that sounded like AI responses. They kept apologizing, and saying “we will get with our team”. We fixed and cleaned what we could ourselves because we spent all of that money on the place and the rest of our money was already reserved for other things. The day before checkout, around noon, they sent someone to clean the property immidiately next to us, and those people drained the hot tub, didn’t clean it, just drained it. So the water was just as filthy as before, we never got to use the hot tub at all. Stove never got fixed. If it weren’t for my husband fixing the water issue, and me going to buy cleaning supplies, that would’ve never been done either. They offered us a measly $100 refund the first time which we declined. We had to do MORE than $100 in manual labor to make it stay able. Plus the supplies I needed to buy? No! Then they offered $150. I had spent money on food to cook while at that cabin, which costed more than what they were offering, that I had to throw away because it wouldn’t have made the 10 hour drive home. I sent videos to Airbnb, and photos, and Airbnb got me sorted out and this place recieved a violation. They never bothered to even look at the place since Christmas which was pretty apparent going off the Christmas glitter and ornaments in the trash. It should have been looked over prior to our arrival and they should have gotten those issues fixed before we arrived. This was our absolute worst experience using an Airbnb ever. I will be sending them a bill for my husbands labor costs, request for reimbursement for my cleaning supplies, as well as a bill for a cleaning fee that I was charged…even though I wound up cleaning it and leaving it in better condition than what it was in during my arrival. This is your warning to not use these people. I left them a 1 star on Airbnb but they already know how upset I am so they’ll probably never leave a review for us so that this one star doesn’t show up on their profile. Thankfully all of the other hosts I have ever had in my 8 years of using Airbnb have been wonderful and this was my first bad experience. But it completely ruined my vacation. We rented this place specifically for the hot tub that we never got to use. It’s too bad I can’t post videos here, or you could actually see EVERYTHING. I...

If I could leave a —5 review I would…. Our “luxurious” cabin has so many issues. On the first day here we discovered our heated pool is cold. The heater does not work. Our hot tub is malfunctioning and the owners told US, the people on vacation paying $4000 to be here, we had to try to fix the hot tub ourselves and take pictures as proof we tried before they’ll send a Maintenance worker out! We could not get it working and they did not send anyone out to fix it 4 days later into the issue. So both the hot tub and pool which are supposed to be heated do not work. Which are the TWO reasons we chose to stay here with young kids who want something to do. But we can’t use either of them. When you step onto the front porch or back porch all you can smell is SEWAGE!!!! This is because their sewage lines were full and they didn’t send someone out to empty them until the day we were checking out.

The master bedroom has a bedside table with a broken drawer (pic attached. Every time you pull it open, the drawer falls apart because the nails are stripped. And in the master bathroom, you can’t use the light and fan when showering…. The fuse blows every single time! That’s with nothing plugged into the bathroom too. The master bedroom door had to be fixed by my husband because it was off balance and you had to slam it to get it to close all the way. The door has warped hinges and needs replaced but they tried to bend them to make it fit better which in turn made the door hard to close.

The trash can in the kitchen is broken too. All of these things should not have been an issue. There is no way all of these problems happened the same day we arrived. Not to mention there are cabins directly next door that have been vacant all week we could have been moved to but instead the owners wanted US to fix the issues with their rental! DO NOT RENT FROM THESE PEOPLE!!!! They’re on airbnb as well as “super hosts” but far from that!!! More like...