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Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc

RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




Aren’t there “inspectors” who have the final word on homes’ cleanliness?
Secondly, what are the cleaners paid. The locals I know all say it’s but a pittance. Are they paid hourly...that would include travel time to the 4x4 area, or by house, that would not. Frankly, they make so little $ that I cant imagine it’s worth the drive.
Hotels are all in one place, easier to scoot from room to room, and have varied check in, out times, ...or rather days....not Sat to Sat, or Sun to Sun.
And not that it matters all that much, but some hotels charge a “resort” fee on top of room rate.


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RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc





Increasing down payments and service fees are inevitable, but sometimes frustrating for renters and owners alike. For instance, Hatteras Realty has a cleaning service fee apparently based on number of bedrooms. Add that fee to insurance, pet fee, and sales tax and you have approximately $700 in fees and sales tax added to a $2,075 base rent home:

Rent $2,075.00
Red Sky Travel Ins- Optional Yes No $181.33
Cleaning Service -4 $139.00
Pet Fee - Optional $100.00
Tax $295.03
Total $2,790.36

As far as I can see, Midgett Realty's additional charges are only for insurance and sales tax. Pet fee and cleaning fee are included in base rent. But are their base rents for similar homes comparable to Hatteras Realty? More research for the renters to do.





RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




People can easily decide to go elsewhere - like the Jersey shore where beach tags (fees) are only $5 to $10/day /person. Payment is to be allowed to walk on the overcrowded beach.


RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




[...... like others have said there is 5% that will never be happy

ish


I don't see what is wrong with, when you spend a few thousand for a week of staying at an accomodation, for the place to be very clean, in good repair, and all of the little things (that are advertised, by the way) in good nic.

If someone is paying $3k for a week, that's $428 a night. Whether it is for two people or 12, it's a lot of money to spend on any accommodation.

Maybe it was not the aim, but saying "5% are not happy" seems to insinuate that those folks are overly picky.

We just want want what we are paying big $$$ (to us) for. And as I said before, I can overlook...aka "live with" certain issues...we bought our own hang strips and made traps with vinegar for the gnats.....we replaced some of the outdoor lights ourselves.....we made due.......but when Twiddy follows up with an INCREASE of the fee that is supposed to handle these issues FOR us....not once, but TWICE by 50% each time in 3 or 4 years= and nothing is getting better??????

Yeah, it lights THIS "5%er" up.


shadango


I was going to just let this die, but I'll give you an example that I just went through this past September.

I booked this house:

Click to follow link...

When I checked in the place wasn't very clean. The granite counter tops in the kitchen were dirty with grease spatter, the furniture in the great room was dirty and stained from wear and tear. Four of the 6 knobs for the stove were busted and unusable. There was a gnat or small black flying insect infestation in the laundry room. The floor to ceiling windows in the great room were filthy dirty. The pool lights were burnt out, the hot tub lights were burnt out, about a third of the outdoor lights on the decking were burnt out, including all the lights in the carport which was actually a pain in the butt if we were coming back to the house at night. The receiver for the surround sound system in the great room had all of the wirings stripped out of the back.

I reported all of this to Twiddy when I checked in on Sunday. I also asked Twiddy for a bucket and a few mops (none at the house) and they said they couldn't do that but they would send cleaning staff to come to take a look. To their credit, they sent a maintenance guy out that same day. But cleaners never came. Maintenance said they couldn't do anything about the bugs, the lights (apparently that's subcontracted out?), the surround sound (that's the responsibility of the owner), or the windows (again the owner is responsible for power washing). He did take a look at the stove and said they'd have to order parts. Since two of the 6 knobs for the stove were functional, I could just take the knob off one burner and put it on the other burner, so technically the stove was fully functional. It was a little ghetto, but it worked.

We were very kind and polite to all parties involved and we actually got the maintenance guy talking. He let down his guard a little bit and explained that by September your cleaning staff is exhausted and they're going to do the bare minimum. It's not really possible for one cleaning person to clean a house this large in 6 hours. Most of them are coming in from over the bridge, Elizabeth City, etc.

He also explained that wear and tear on a house this large is brutal over the peak season. Twiddy doesn't really enforce occupancy limits and during peak season these houses get people stacked like cordwood in them and no one cares about trying to take care of things. Your 8 bedroom home might have 20 or more people in it for 4th of July.

So what did I do? I woke up Monday morning at 6am, watched the beautiful sunrise over the Atlantic ocean from my deck, had my coffee and some breakfast, and then drove to WalMart for a cleaning supply run.

Picked up a big bucket, two large squeegee mops, cleaning supplies, and a couple of fly swatters.

We get back to the house and get to work. The first step is to cull the herd in the laundry room. Next, pull everything off the kitchen counters and scrub everything down. Then it's time to move on to the windows. We pulled all the screens out of the windows, and spent a few hours scrubbing the exterior windows and then finished with Windex and paper towels.

EDIT: Apparently there is a character limit for posts on this board. This is Part 1 of 2.


RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




Part 2 of 2

On to the interior of the great room we go! Do interior windows with Windex and paper towels, and since I had the bucket and mops handy we moved furniture around and did the flooring in the great room. That water was pretty gross when we were done.
It was very clear that floors had not been done in a while. Since we didn't have kids we cannibalized the bedspreads from the bunk rooms and turned them into slipcovers for the great room couches.

I couldn't do anything about the exterior lighting because I didn't have a ladder or screwdrivers to get the covers off and I wasn't going out to buy the tools to do it myself.

But all in all, by about 2 pm on Monday I had a sparkling clean great room, a sparkling clean kitchen, breathtakingly magnificent ocean views, and I felt like the place was mine. By cleaning it and taking the time to get it up to my standards I felt a sense of ownership over the place and it gave me a sense of pride.

I took some time to get some wiring done on the receiver later in the week and managed to get 2 of 8 surround sound speakers up and running. Was a pity I couldn't get them all going. I didn't have time to run to radio shack to get the wiring and cables I needed.

The bugs in the laundry room came back every day, but I just incorporated killing them into my laundry routine. However, in a passive aggressive move, I did not clean the dead bug carcasses off the walls. I drew the line at scrubbing walls while on vacation. I left that for the cleaning staff.

At the end of it, I had a great vacation and thoroughly enjoyed my time. Now having said that, should I really have had to do all that when that week ran me almost 7000$. That's a thousand dollars a night.

If I had booked that house over 4th of July and paid 22k, or over three thousand a night, I would have been absolutely livid.

The review I left of the home was this: "Of all the houses I have rented at the Outer Banks, the Echapper Belle was by far the greatest disappointment. Now having said that, if you have the means to rent this house and choose not to; then you are an idiot."

Twiddy did not publish my review.






RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




I know you were able to enjoy using the house after all of that work. But Twiddy owes you 1000 dollars of your rental back for having to clean a house they rented to you in unusable condition.


RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




Yeah. I don’t mind keeping up with the cleaning during the week, but I don’t expect to do that kind of work for my stay.


RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




Yeah. I don’t mind keeping up with the cleaning during the week, but I don’t expect to do that kind of work for my stay.

judyk


But if you rent from Twiddy, that level of work is going to be required if you have certain standards or expectations of cleanliness.

There's frustration over that and as pointed out by Shadango, especially considering Twiddy has just raised fees again. I think it was compounded by the fact that the attitude espoused in this thread was "there's always the 5% that will never be happy".

When you're paying a thousand dollars a night, is it OK to be told that there's nothing they can do about all the broken stuff? And should you have to spend 8 hours hard-core cleaning your beach house on the day you arrive?

Well...when you rent from Twiddy, the answer is, sadly, yes. Yes, you do.



RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




^^ I’m not arguing with you. Just stating that I doubt many...no, make that any, renters would want to do that much to clean the place to proper standards. I’m rather surprised that Twiddy would be ok with it, if it’s true.
I stay on HI so have no dog in this fight. But just to satisfy my own curiosity, is this rate, that’s increased twofold in the last couple of years, only applicable to 4x4 home area...or is it also on other Twiddy properties (eg Corolla, Duck)?
Just surprises me that the poor cleaning would be dismissed by Twiddy as I’ve heard so many good things about them.


RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




^^ I’m not arguing with you. Just stating that I doubt many...no, make that any, renters would want to do that much to clean the place to proper standards. I’m rather surprised that Twiddy would be ok with it, if it’s true.
I stay on HI so have no dog in this fight. But just to satisfy my own curiosity, is this rate, that’s increased twofold in the last couple of years, only applicable to 4x4 home area...or is it also on other Twiddy properties (eg Corolla, Duck)?
Just surprises me that the poor cleaning would be dismissed by Twiddy as I’ve heard so many good things about them.

judyk


OK, I've stayed with Twiddy twice. Once last May in a 6 bedroom semi OF home. My "home service fee" was 75.00$ for a 10 day lease.

The 8br dirty monster I outlined above had a home service fee of 125.00$ for a weekly lease.

Looking at their website for 2019 the same home from last May now has a 115$ home service fee. For 2019 for the same 8br monster is now a 195$ home service fee.

These increases are for all Twiddy homes, not just the 4x4 area. I vacation in Corolla.

Looks like it might be bedroom dependant, but they have increased fees this year by 40-80$ for 2019.

A quick check of their homes in the 4x4 area seems to have the same ~195$ service fee for an 8-10 bedroom home.

I don't know what Happened with the Echapper Belle. Maybe it was a one-off. I can tell you that the home I stayed in last May was SPOTLESS! I was actually the first guest for the season in that home 5/4/18-5/13/18.

I know that because the owners had completely replaced the gas grill for the season, so when I got to the home there was literally a brand new stainless steel gas grill that I made a point to clean very well after every time that I used it. No for real though, after the owners did start of season maintenance on that place...WOW was I impressed with that home! The place was super pet-friendly, too. It's rare that you find a large kennel on the ground floor capable of accommodating a 115 lb Bernese Mountain Dog. We didn't need it, my boys are well mannered and don't have separation anxiety, but it was a nice touch.

I probably didn't complain loudly enough, and I probably wasn't nasty enough to Twiddy this past September. But it's not in my nature to be that way. I took pictures on my phone of all the issues and went to their office in person. They said maintenance and cleaning would be out. Maintenance came, but cleaning never did. The maintenance guy was extremely cool and hung out with us for about an hour, and let us know that these monster 8br OF homes are not what they appear in the pictures. Cleaning staff is burnt out and this is what you get in September.

He told us point blank that no one was going to replace pool or hot tub lights. Hot tub lights will get fixed when the owner buys a new hot tub. He said point blank "this house will probably never have working pool lights again" and that the busted knobs for the stove burners had probably been like that all season.

We didn't tear into him or give him any crap, why would we? He just told us the truth. Good on him! We appreciated that.

Now we know what we have to do. It's gonna cost us 100$ in cleaning supplies and 8 hours of our time, but my group will get the job done. We always do. And by the end of Monday afternoon, I had a really sweet ocean front mansion to enjoy.

Look you gotta keep the right attitude. Sometimes things don't turn out so well, so you have to take charge and make it into what YOU need it to be. So that's what we did.

Now having said that I've got 3 weeks lined up for 2019, with a total rent/tax/fee outlay of about 15,000$ and I can assure you that Twiddy isn't going to see a dime of my 15 grand.

All I can do is take my business elsewhere and see what happens. Which is exactly what I've done.




RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




I think the undercurrent in this story is the pitfalls of renting a larger house after the summer season. There is a point of diminishing returns in being able to effectively maintain houses over the rental season when the houses are larger. I'm sure someone out there could analyze it, but I would guess it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-6 bedrooms. Over that, there is too much wear and tear due to sheer numbers of guests for a cleaning crew to get the house fully cleaned for the next renters. The impact grows over he summer until it is a wreck by August. Rent in May and June, and the house will be wonderful. Rent in September and you will have to spend one of your vacation days to clean up weeks worth of mess.


RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




I think the undercurrent in this story is the pitfalls of renting a larger house after the summer season. There is a point of diminishing returns in being able to effectively maintain houses over the rental season when the houses are larger. I'm sure someone out there could analyze it, but I would guess it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-6 bedrooms. Over that, there is too much wear and tear due to sheer numbers of guests for a cleaning crew to get the house fully cleaned for the next renters. The impact grows over he summer until it is a wreck by August. Rent in May and June, and the house will be wonderful. Rent in September and you will have to spend one of your vacation days to clean up weeks worth of mess.

CoolBreezeKDH


This is spot on. I don't even have anything to add. You are totally correct.


RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




Hmmm....I'm thinking a lot of the above complaints would end if rentals ran from Sunday to Friday, leaving most of Friday and all day Saturday for cleaning.


RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




How awful! I just checked out the photos of this house and it looks like a great house.

What I find frustrating is that they don't publish the negative reviews. Maybe next time, consider using Airbnb or Homeaway? As a host/super host, I am fortunate to never have gotten a bad review. However, I can tell you that Airbnb and Homeaway does not filter out any reviews - what you see is what you get. I find very deceiving that rental companies don't publish all of their reviews....that should tell you something right there!

Amanda


RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




While I am well aware that there are always going to be unhappy guests I also find it very shady to not make comments/reviews public. People are generally more likely to write a review when they are angry or feel slighted so I think most people take that into account when they read online comments.


RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




Occupancy rates are the driving factor. If the home is rented 100% of the season the cost to the renter is going to go up. The service is going to go down. Drop that occupancy to seventy percent and watch rates go down and service go up.

I bought last year. I was amazed at the number of really ratty properties I looked at that were rented 100 percent of the time. Broken, uncomfortable and dirty furniture didn't matter. Busted appliances didn't matter. Filth didn't matter. Just make sure you have pretty pictures on the website.

You can't even rent a tent in the most desirable areas during most of the season. That's driving rents and fees through the roof across the whole Outer Banks. The as of yet unanswered question is, "Where is the roof?"

Steve


RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




I remember when Village Realty would give you a basket with wine and cheese in it. Those days are long gone Lol


RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




When someone rents my house in the beginning of the season they see it as we left it, in perfect condition. By the end of the season it takes Suzi and I at least a day or two to straighten up.

It seems EVERY year someone has taken apart the wiring on the AV equip and left it screwed up for the next guest. A few years ago I started leaving cables with labels for gaming and iPods etc, while that has helped a bit I showed up at the end of one season to find the equipment moved all over the house (and yes it had cable locks)

My comment about 5% never being happy is because I read every review of my house, one mid July review was very negative and the very next week was a raving review about how perfect the house was and how much they loved all the new kitchen appliances..........sooooooooo ya just never know.

After 12 seasons under our belt you think we'd be immune to the occasional nasty comments but we are not. Owning a vacation rental house is a special kind of torture best left to the deaf, dumb and blind.


RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




[...........we actually got the maintenance guy talking. He let down his guard a little bit and explained that by September your cleaning staff is exhausted and they're going to do the bare minimum. It's not really possible for one cleaning person to clean a house this large in 6 hours. Most of them are coming in from over the bridge, Elizabeth City, etc.


That's not an explanation IMHO - it's a cop out. What is the difference if it is day one of "the season" or the day after the last day?

A customer is a customer and a job is a job. This ultimately rests on Twiddy's shoulders and clearly they don't care enough if they allow this to be the situation.

If one person is not enough to clean a house in 6 hours at the end of the season then it's not enough to do so at the beginning either.....Get different cleaners, pay them more, put more than 1 cleaner on a house - whatever the situation, there is a job to be done and done properly.



He also explained that wear and tear on a house this large is brutal over the peak season.


That's also a copout......if the maintenance people cant keep up with the work load then the problem is either too few or poor quality maintenance workers. If there is nothing wrong with a house at the start of the season, that should be the "easy" time for the maintenance people.....the during and post season times is when they should be at their best and doing the full job. It's what they are hired to do.

And 6 knobs on a stove do not get broken in one or two renter's stays.....that is a cumulative issue, which is similar to issues I have seen at the house we rent. They allow it to get worse and worse til they finally address it.

And things like burnt out light bulbs EVERYWHERE are things that are easily inspectable and easily and quickly rectified by any handyman worth his salt.

I am not talking about being overly picky about cleanliness...I am talking about stuff that any decent accommodations company would handle so the next renter doesn't have to deal with it.

Fact is there is no excuse for Twiddy not to have proper cleaning and maintenance staff to handle stuff immediately and quickly.

They have a half dozen blue shirts standing at the entrance on check in day to hold the door ope and the same or more to air up people's tires on checkout day....the same days that they are supposedly short staffed for cleaning and maintenance people....and all earning a wage I am sure.

I can open my own door and air up my own tires....Fire those people and reallocate the $$$$ to go towards extra cleaning and maintenance staff on those days. That's at least 6 more bodies to lend to the actual important tasks.


RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




I don't know what Happened with the Echapper Belle. Maybe it was a one-off. I can tell you that the home I stayed in last May was SPOTLESS! I was actually the first guest for the season in that home 5/4/18-5/13/18.


If I read this right, how dirty could the place be if you were the first guest in a brand new house?

It SHOULD have been spotless.....


Cleaning staff is burnt out and this is what you get in September.


Again, thats the Twiddy go -to. Blaming the "end of the season".

Please. I work every day. If I get burnt out to the point where I do not do my job after only a few months of working, I get fired and my employer finds a better more reliable worker. isnt that how most jobs are? Do the job right or get fired?

and that the busted knobs for the stove burners had probably been like that all season.


EXACTLY how long does it take to order new knobs for a stove?



Look you gotta keep the right attitude. Sometimes things don't turn out so well, so you have to take charge and make it into what YOU need it to be.


MY attitude is that when I pay good money for something a service, an item or an accommodation I expect to get what I paid for. Expecting a clean and functional home isnt something I should have make for myself when me and the owner are paying Twiddy for that I dont mind biting the bullet once in a while. But every year? And they have the audacity to raise the cleaning fee for a second time in 4 years, under the guise of "increasing costs to keep your vacation home clean and in good repair as you would expect"?????!!!!! LOL

Ugh.

Maybe there IS some validity to the argument that a rental home isnt the same as a hotel.

Wit ha hotel, if the place is dirty and in poor repair all the time, word will quiclly get around that its a dive....and business will suffer. Poor reviews on independt sites that cover hotels will compound that.

But with a rental house controlled by a place like Twiddy, there will always be someone new to fill an open spot, and Twiddy certainly doesn't publish poor reviews. You dont know if a place is well maintained etc until you have already paid and get there.....





RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




What I find frustrating is that they don't publish the negative reviews. I find very deceiving that rental companies don't publish all of their reviews....that should tell you something right there!

Amanda

Amuelle


EXACTLY!!!! If they didm they would be FORCED to improve stuff.....as it stands, NO ONE knows of the issues a particular home may have so people keep booking there, blissfully unaware.

At least by booking the same home thru Twiddy every year, I have an idea of what is the norm......which isnt right, but at least its not a complete surprise and let down.

Look, a house that is brand new or at the beginning of the season is EASY to have clean and ready.

Its the later-season months that determine if a company is doing what they promise to do for the owners and guests.

CLEANERS CLEAN.

MAINTENANCE people MAINTAIN.

If they cannot find staff to do the job properly EVERY DAY, or if there is not enough staff to do the job right, then its poor management.


RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etcfr




… And things like burnt out light bulbs EVERYWHERE are things that are easily inspectable and easily and quickly rectified by any handyman worth his salt.and maintenance staff on those days …


Theeth smiley

Received an e-mail from neighbors across the street right after the season. They were in their house for the first time after the season: "... I just got to OBX today and noticed you have some exterior lights on on the front upper deck ..."

O.k. Send Brindley over to turn the bedroom deck light off and check other lights.

Text the next evening: "I hate to tell you this but we are sitting out on our deck and it looks like there are lights on the back of your house. The trees are all reflecting light and we can see light on the left side of your house. Maybe Brindley should check all the lights."

Came down that Sunday. Saw my neighbor and told him that the light switches were always left on when I come down, but the lights outside were all burned out. The only reason he saw lights on this year was because I switched to LEDs in the spring. Theeth smiley


RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




Occupancy rates are the driving factor. If the home is rented 100% of the season the cost to the renter is going to go up. The service is going to go down. Drop that occupancy to seventy percent and watch rates go down and service go up.

I bought last year. I was amazed at the number of really ratty properties I looked at that were rented 100 percent of the time. Broken, uncomfortable and dirty furniture didn't matter. Busted appliances didn't matter. Filth didn't matter. Just make sure you have pretty pictures on the website.

You can't even rent a tent in the most desirable areas during most of the season. That's driving rents and fees through the roof across the whole Outer Banks. The as of yet unanswered question is, "Where is the roof?"

Steve

SteveWolf


Very well said.

Its taking advantage of the customer IMHO.

Hotels don't work that way.

I stay at a $450 a night hotel for work a couple times a year and accommodations are ALWAYS perfect. And anything that isnt perfect, when I call about it, is fixed in hours, not days.

And that's during the off season as well as peak.


RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




… And things like burnt out light bulbs EVERYWHERE are things that are easily inspectable and easily and quickly rectified by any handyman worth his salt.and maintenance staff on those days …


Theeth smiley

Received an e-mail from neighbors across the street right after the season. They were in their house for the first time after the season: "... I just got to OBX today and noticed you have some exterior lights on on the front upper deck ..."

O.k. Send Brindley over to turn the bedroom deck light off and check other lights.

Text the next evening: "I hate to tell you this but we are sitting out on our deck and it looks like there are lights on the back of your house. The trees are all reflecting light and we can see light on the left side of your house. Maybe Brindley should check all the lights."

Came down that Sunday. Saw my neighbor and told him that the light switches were always left on when I come down, but the lights outside were all burned out. The only reason he saw lights on this year was because I switched to LEDs in the spring. Theeth smiley

PaulOinMA


I know that guests leaving lights on 24/7 is an issue.

Heck, I yell at my kids for that at HOME all the time...LOL

Still, it should be expected and the agency should have the time to correct burnt out bulbs built in to every turnover. They shouldn't have to rely on neighbors to tell you to tell them.....

It takes just minutes to check....turn the lights on, go outside and verify they are lit. Go back inside and turn off. Replace the ones that are dead. DONE DEAL.

Too many times we have had to come home in the 4x4 area to a pitch black garage and yard area......not impossible, but light is nice to have. LOL


RE: Twiddy and ever increasing fees, service etc




… Now having said that, should I really have had to do all that when that week ran me almost 7000$. That's a thousand dollars a night.


You call yourself one of the "dirty poor" and spend $1,000 a night on a house? Your definition of poor is pretty funny. Theeth smiley


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