Complaint Review: Tropical Vacations Group LLC

Location: 432 NE 12th Ave Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301

We rented this two story Victorian Style home in"Victoria Park", Ft. Lauderdale, which is close to Las Olas. We paid over $8,000 for a 13 day rental described as "luxurious."

This house is a really dirty, tired and beat up rental, the pictures on line are deceiving. Several closet doors have holes punched in them. Our feet were black from the dirty tile floors throughout the house. The pool was murky and unusable for several days. The bedding was all stained with blood and body fluids (really gross -My wife and I arrived late at night and went straight to bed. The next morning we saw the sheets and immediately stripped the bed to wash everything. Then we saw the mattress cover, stains everywhere.) The kitchen was stocked with many ancient rusty pots and pans and coffee cups that looked moldy. We rewashed everything, but it was not fit to use. The appliances are all dented, some sound like they are on their last legs, and the stove door is dripping something gross and can't be cleaned. The BBQ was filthy, and there is an obvious gas clog/leak at the burner. The result is a super hot flame in the area of the temp knobs and very little heat on the grill. The knobs get so hot both me and my son burned our thumbs shutting it down. There were burned out light bulbs everywhere, inside and outside the house, over the pool table, and all around the BBQ and pool area. We could not see to use the BBQ. There were exposed wires in the hot tub where a lens is missing. Pool guy said "100% guaranteed ok" Do I trust him? The way the pool and hot tub work together is that either the pool must be too warm (100+) in order to use the hot tub or if the pool is kept cooler the hot tub will never be hot. There is tin foil all over the house on light switches and door locks, not sure if this is a danger, but it all looks looks rinky-dink.

The Ft. Lauderdale police showed up one evening in the back yard of the house, responding to a noise complaint. They told us that the woman next door spies on this house and calls the police all the time, and they have to respond. We weren't really making much noise. Fortunately they were very professional and left quickly.

We called and emailed Tropical Vacations Group to address our issues. Nobody responded. We left a message that unless we heard back from someone, we were coming to their office the next day. No one called us back. We went to find the office with a stained blanket, moldy coffee cup, and filthy dish rack in hand. The only people there were two German interns who had no authority to help us. They told us that they too had stayed at Victoria Park and could not use the pool either. They told us that Lauren Schmid our broker and the company owner Kai Stadler were off together on vacation in Colorado. Pretty infuriating. This was an expensive rental billed as "luxurious." This is not correct and the rental rate is about 40-50% too high. I do not know about any other rentals offered by Tropical Vacations Group, but if this is how they keep their properties, there are better choices out there.