Shocking Guesthouse Stay in Saldanha

We booked accommodation with the Owner as our furnished rental unit was not ready. He quoted us R300 per person for the full self-catering unit with DSTV and wifi. We attempted to find alternative accommodation during the week but there was no suitable pet-friendly place available in a 50 km radius.

The very first day we alerted him telephonically that the DSTV was not working and that bedside lamps, the oven and the shower was not working (or not working properly) and that the windows in the second bedroom did not close properly and that it was bitterly cold in there.

The owner let himself into the unit on three occasions during our 8 day stay there, without announcing himself or phoning beforehand, which we feel was a gross violation of our privacy. He did not even enter to address any of the issues we raised and without citing a specific reason. We even tried leaving the keys in the lock to prevent him from entering without permission but to no avail.

On the third occasion, he removed the DSTV decoder and never brought it back for the remaining three days of our stay. We contacted him every day, especially about the DSTV, as the wifi was too slow to properly stream Netflix and we had to use almost 10 GB of our own data to have something to watch. We could not go out for entertainment as my mother that was with us cannot climb stairs the whole time (the place has about 30 stairs just to get in the front door) and the DSTV was an integral part of the service we paid for.

Even after the agent that referred us to him contacted him, none of the issues complained about was remedied.

He kept on saying that all the other decoders in the units had been working - but if that was the case why did he not replace our unit's decoder with one of the other decoders. Eventually the Saturday night he sent me a text to inform me that the decoder was broken. How does it take 7 days to establish that and not rectify it?

The kitchen was teeming with ****roaches and there was no cleaning products available. We had to buy our own cleaning products to at least clean the kitchen and wash the dishes. We had to clean the pots and the crockery in the cupboards ourselves before we could use anything. The bedding and towels was never replaced in 8 days and we had to use our own or buy extra.

The wardrobes in the bedrooms was filled with random items and suitcases, and we could not unpack our suitcases for the duration of the week.

The day we left I again reminded him of the oven and the broken bedlamps and he did not even apologise for any discomfort his lack of service caused.

We had to eat take-aways for 6 of the 8 days we had not budgeted for because we could not make anything in the oven as it had burned our dinner the first two nights, even at 70 degrees celsius.

There was two half rolls of toiletpaper which we had to replace ourselves. The Owner furhter stated that there was coffee, tea and sugar for our use for the duration of our stay. Upon inspection that consisted of 4 teabags, three tea****s of coffee and a sugar container filled with maizemeal.

The Owner stated that he switched on the geyser - this was not done and when we wanted to shower the Sunday night the water was ice cold. Only on the monday after we located the switches we say that the geyser was never switched on.

After we moved into the rental unit and upon our payment not reflecting in his bank account immediately he has kept on harassing us at our new rental unit, the address of which he got from our estate agent under false pretences. He let himself in our yard, to hammer on the doors and the windows and when he left and we went to the gate immediately after, our gate lock was removed, which we had to replace and give all the other tenants keys. He has persisted in his harassment until we approached the SAPS who had to warn him from refraining from approaching us.

We have since gone through reviews on the booking sites where this guesthouse we are apparently not the first guests that has encountered these problems, from the linen not being replaced to him letting himself into the rented unit without permission.

There he advertises use of a patio area, which we also could not use as the other tenanted unit used it. They also advertise secure private parking, which actually transpired to be unsecured street parking. The photographs on the sites where he advertises is further a gross misrepresentation of the unit and does not look like the unit at all!