Our WORST experience in self catering!

This has been our WORST experience in 40 years of renting self catering world-wide! We, a European couple, came to stay for a long rental (2 months) during January and February 2019 and paid R 62 000 for this, as per agreement. Since we are very busy people during the year, we particularly stressed upon our only requirement: peace, quiet, and total privacy, also in the garden (as mentioned in their leaflet: “private and secluded garden”). Well, forget about that! We looked at the cottage, a year before arriving and found it adorable, with only a laundry facility next door for which we were promised the use. Imagine our total shock when we found their son and daughter-in-law having moved in next door into the transformed laundry facility, only separated by a very thin wall and a flimsy door. Wasn’t the owners house large enough to accommodate them? Did they really have to pester their paying guests with all the subsequent noise (TV blaring, loud voices, loud music, water running at 5am)?? When I remarked upon their sun umbrella and garden furniture in “our” supposedly “private” garden, the owners stopped all conversation with us and turned really nasty. From now on, laundry could only occur at their set days and hours because WE had to respect their son’s privacy! (Hello, self catering??) But the worst experience was the banging on our door by the owner, late at night after a scorchingly hot day and ordering us to switch off the aircon because we were “wasting his money”. And if we didn’t comply immediately, he would pull out the plug! When my husband rep****: “But we are paying for this” the answer was: “you are paying to stay here, NOT for the aircon!” ( Clearly a contradiction of what is mentioned in their brochure!) Our biggest gripe? The owners broke the contract since they never informed us of the changed situation and confronted us with a fait accompli. They knew only too well that if they had informed us about people moving in next door we would have immediately cancelled our reservation and asked for a refund. And then I still haven’t mentioned the camera, installed to be able to check out this rental cottage and its garden, and this without preventing us. (This is ******* in Europe!!) Nor the fact that he threw me off internet/wifi without explanation during the last couple of days. Needless to say, we will never ever set foot in this place again and want to advise future renters of what exactly is going on here.