Warning against use of Turnkey Vacation Rentals to manage properties

Paul368
Level 4
New Orleans, LA

Warning against use of Turnkey Vacation Rentals to manage properties

Hello, 

 

I have been a host for six years across two cities, and I wanted to put out some information about my experience with Turnkey Vacation Rentals in Nashville, TN. This company was a complete disaster for my listings, and I would never recommend any host use them. I have a TON of things to say, but I'll try to list the basic issues with their "service."

 

1. They advertise a "hands-off" and "worry free" service for absent landlords. It was anything but. They couldn't even handle basics like getting the lawn cut before it was 3 feet tall in mid-summer, causing mutiple terrible reviews. I had to check up their work constantly, and they showed no care at all to making sure guests had a good experience and would leave the listings with good reviews.

 

2. They similarly advertise high-quality vacation listings, but they were awful at basic things that give guests a good experience. Replacement towels and linens were of really low quality, and not maintained well, despite these expenses being charged to me. They didn't even try to use good products when they weren't paying for them! Again, no care given to providing a good guest experience, and the listing suffered for it. 

 

3. They never held guests accountable for damages or even apparent theft. Items went missing from the home, including a full bed frame. Curtain and bathroom hardware was pulled down and shoddily replaced multiple times, but no guests were held accountable for these damages, and I ended up eating the costs.

 

4. Becuase the reviews suffered so terribly, after buring through my old airnbnb reservations that were already in place at handover, they had one good month of revenues (when their listing was new), and then after that, reservations tanked. I had 3-4 days out of two months reserved when I finally fired them. Now I'm having to cover the mortgage at this house with no revenue coming in for two months wheil I wait to get a long term tenant in place.  

 

Bottom line, this company is unprofessional in many ways and not to be trusted with any property that is nice enough to be a good airbnb listing. Plus, there is no bond or deposit in place to ensure their care of your property or business reputation. Use their services at your own risk.  

110 Replies 110

Are you a person of color, Sarah?

@Joshua687  I am not, but I'm well aware of bigotry towards many demographics (my great- grandparents were gassed at Auschwitz, so I'm not some discrimination denier)  What I was saying is that if you read through all the bad stuff people have to say about this company, they cancel lots of reservations last minute, leaving guests in the lurch, regardless of their race or nationality, etc. 

@Sarah997 I definitely appreciate your heritage. Thanks for your reply. I’m wary of non-POC persons telling POC persons when they have and have not been discriminated against. Trust that I am not assuming that TurnKey has discriminated against me; I have additional evidence. It’s also happened to me before. Perhaps I should’ve said all this in my initial post. Then again, I don’t feel I should have to.

Helen3
Level 10
Bristol, United Kingdom

How do you know it's based on your race - particularly when you have a house as your profile pic @Joshua687 

I changed my profile pic after the incident.

Brian2036
Level 10
Arkansas, United States

@Sara6719 @Sarah977 @Helen3 @Joshua687 @Paul368 

 

It has been noted several times that many of these property management companies are unreliable, dishonest, and to be avoided.

 

To be fair, I suppose they have taken on an impossible job, and any host who expects them to care about the host’s property is foolishly optimistic.

 

Guests who expect reasonable service are also likely to be disappointed.

 

 We had a bad experience with one whose business model appears to include running properties into the ground and siphoning off the profits until the owner is exasperated enough to sell at a discount price. Then they buy it, remodel, and resell to the next victim.

 

Unfortunately these companies seem to be Airbnb’s favorite customers and it is not always obvious to guests that they are dealing with a corporation rather than a responsible owner.

Samantha946
Level 2
Redlands, CA

I had a truly awful guest experience with Turnkey.... Long story short we showed up for our rental in South Tahoe and the driveway wasn’t plowed (we had to drag our all luggage through 2 feet of snow and ask a neighboor to use their driveway to park at 10PM) , nor was the property cleaned after the previous guests. Dishes, trash, and food had been sitting out for two days when we arrived. Turnkey offered $200 off our rental, with the promise that a rep from the ‘local team’ (who's name is supposedly Jason), would be in contact ASAP. Well, no one has outreached me after a week. I wish I would have read the reviews prior, DO NOT GIVE YOUR BUISNESS TO TURNKEY. 

Similar experience as an owner. Arrived to find house was not cleaned after guests checked out. Turnkey charged cleaning fee but did not clean. It was nasty. Had  to clean it myself. Very poorly managed company and have no concern for customers. 

David8433
Level 2
Atlanta, GA

I have hosted for 18 months with TurnKey. My partner and I live in Atlanta and own a 5 bedroom house in Brevard, North Carolina. We'd had 18 months of long-term rentals and, in winter of 2020 our management company told us they couldn't rent it. So we furnished and signed with TurnKey's Asheville operation.

Overall, although our partnership with TurnKey has been wildly successful, there have been glitches, primarily communication glitches. There are people on their staff who did a fabulous job and who I would wholeheartedly recommend.

Here are a few comments on the original poster's points:

1. Yes, you have to check up on their work constantly. I check my owner's dashboard every morning.

2. When linens needed replacing, they let us know. If we didn't purchase what we wanted, they purchased it and the quality was acceptable by my standards. I didn't like the hotel-size shampoo they supplied.

3. Guests cracked a 50-inch tv and TurnKey reimbursed us for it. Guests damaged the garbage disposal and the dishwasher and we ate those costs. It seems not everybody knows how to run a dishwasher, or doesn't care. Small stuff disappeared, yes.

4. We got lots of 5-star reviews. We had so many bookings we never got to stay ourselves in-season.  Several months we were booked 28 days. Our winter is slow, so we had to cover our mortgage those months.

As for the original poster's comment about insurance, we were satisfied everyone was insured.

TurnKey has now been acquired by Vacasa so it appears the original investors have made out well.  Will Vacasa be any better or worse? My guess is it will be about the same. Will we stay with them? For now, yes.

Taber0
Level 2
Manhattan Beach, CA

I’ll preface by stating I rarely write reviews. I’m easily content. My family has two air b n b’s and they get odd reviews and complaints. But this experience has been extremely disappointing.  I’ll try and keep it simple. We had a bad experience with a unique water pipe burst on our 2nd night at 11pm that was pouring water for 30 minutes non stop out of the bottom of the bathroom sink. Firefighters couldn’t get it to stop for 20 minutes after we called them immediately. Finally a plumber did and fixed the issue around midnight.  We were able to use our own blankets to stop some of the 2 inches of water from ruining more of the house. But water damage was extensive and ruined the bedroom floor plus some of the living room.  Our kids were woken by all the chaos and the firefighters trying to turn off the water outside their bedroom window plus draining the water out as much as they could. We finally tried to sleep at 1am on a mattress on the floor in the living room/kitchen.  This was a result of the night before getting no sleep because the bed squeaks with any slight movement due to a bad box spring set up. A complaint and a previous review stated this already so I thought it would’ve been fixed on our stay. It was beyond annoying.  Then in the morning we asked for an extra hour to check out since we had the nightmare night before (11am instead of 10am) and they said No. Our kids were miserable cuz they had bad sleep and we didn’t sleep well and now they can’t give us an hour extra?  They needed to clean and rent out the ruined home which shouldn’t

be rented till fixed?  Then when they had a chance to make up for all this they said they could only refund $50 since we slept there still. I assume the $50 was for our ruined blankets. I said this was unacceptable and they then offered $20 more.  Terrible customer service after we saved this home from a lot of damage acting quickly and didn’t just try and leave at midnight to get to a hotel (which would’ve cost them more as well).  Turnkey Vacation Rentals (who manages this property) has been very unprofessional and someone who I will never rent from again. Air b & b stepped in finally and paid us HALF of 1 nightly rate plus service fees. At this point it wasn’t about the $. It was principle that we had our trip ruined and they wanted to do nothing about it.  This unit was cute but the management failed to fix the previous reviews complaints and then they botched making things right after the disaster.  They may not fix the now moldy bathroom and bedroom floors that were saturated with water (an inch to two inches) so beware.  They didn’t listen to previous issues so I wouldn’t expect them to listen to this review.  They were lucky we acted quickly and this occurred while we were home.  The plumber said the pipes were very old and should’ve been checked to avoid this.

@Taber0 "A complaint and a previous review stated this already so I thought it would’ve been fixed on our stay."

Why would you assume it had been fixed? Reviews are there for a reason and to ignore them or assume the issues raised had been fixed isn't a great idea. This company gets terrible reviews. 

 

I would never book a place run by any of these big property management companies as they all tend to have reviews complaining about problems, lack of responsiveness, refusal to refund for real problems, listings not being properly cleaned, furnishings being in poor condition, lack of maintenance.

 

Airbnb turns a blind eye to the doings of these big player listings, and lets them get away with things they would delist ordinary hosts for, because they fill Airbnb's coffers with guest fees.  Stick with listings run by real hands-on hosts, not management companies. 

Taber0
Level 2
Manhattan Beach, CA

Lesson learned. I like to think people care. Unfortunately the actual owner gets hurt in this process. My mom puts a lot of time and heart into her listings. Guess that’s why they’re successful. 

Sarah977
Level 10
Sayulita, Mexico

@Taber0  "Unfortunately the actual owner gets hurt in this process."

 

The good owners do, yes. And I've read plenty of posts by hosts who started off having one of these big companies manage for them, but soon canned them due to the bad reviews and guest complaints that ensued.

However, a lot of these property managed places seem to be owned by people who don't care, either. They don't want to spring for better furniture, proper maintenance, etc. They just want income without putting any care into what they are renting.

 

I've seen this on the review pages of big management companies- some of the reviews say the place was great, others have lots of complaints. If the property owners care about what they are presenting, as long as the manager makes sure the place is clean and they are responsive to guests, they might get great reviews. But if they have portfolios that include places where the homeowner is uncaring, the managers may suggest that it's time for some upgrading, new curtains and rugs, new furniture to replace what is all scratched up and stained, and the owner refuses to spring for that, the place just keeps getting bad reviews. I guess these companies would rather keep the account and get paid, regardless of the reviews and angry guests, than ditch those cheapo owners. Seems like a poor business practice to me, though.

Posting this here so Turnkey keyboard warriors can read and take action and also, guests can see what a pathetic company these clowns are.

ABSOLUTELY HORRENDOUS CUSTOMER SERVICE
Turnkey Vacation Rentals requires reservation holder to register every single guest on their portal. Upon arrival, the guard did not have the list of our guest names and would not allow my guests to enter.
 
Dealing with this company has been a headache from the beginning, as due to our work schedule my wife would have arrived earlier at the property than me and Turnkey Vacation Rentals rejected my request to register her as a secondary reservation holder. The level of customer service and flexibility to provide a smooth path to a short vacation was horrible and absolutely unacceptable.
 
Their responses are mostly canned automated responses that do not offer any help or solution. We were embarrassed in front of our guests would NEVER EVER use this or any other corporate-owned property again.

@Paul368, thank you for sharing your experiences with this company!

 

It is valuable information. I know I did a lot of research here before starting hosting, and hopefully other hosts who are considering using Turnkey Vacation Rentals will do their research and benefit from your review.

 

I appreciate you taking the time and trouble to document the difficulties you faced; I hope you recover from this and get back on track with your property soon.