Anonymous

November 20, 2018 - November 22, 2018 For several years now, we have stayed at the Beach House Condos for both summer vacation and Thanksgiving. Costs to rent for a week can be close to ~$4500 during the Summer for a 2 or 3 bedroom unit to ~$1200 for the Fall. This year, we rented room 401A for Thanksgiving. We arrived on Tuesday. At this time, we didn't notice anything, nor did we on Wednesday. On Thursday morning (Thanksgiving Day), while I was sitting in the bed in the master bedroom trying to catch up on business paperwork, two live bedbugs came crawling up the side of the bed. I immediately captured the bugs and showed to my husband. We immediately closed off the bedroom, stripped the bed, and flipped the mattresses and box springs. We had blood stains on the sheets from where I had been bitten. We found multiple carcasses and several living bedbugs on the boxsprings. We captured 2-4 more bedbugs crawling on the sheets and one on the wall. We brought the glass where we had contained the bugs to the management office, which was closed due to the holiday. We finally spoke with a Wyndham representative that was not on-site at the Beach House. She had to contact the on-call manager. The on-call manager basically stated that they would check in to our concerns the following day. Until that time, they did the following: (1) moved us to a new room, (2) instructed us to leave every clothing item in the current room unless we washed and dried everything for a minimum of 20 minutes on high heat. Multiple times we were told that they would have to "confirm" that the bugs were actual bed bugs and that a pest control inspector would have to come and verify that what we found were bed bugs. My Thanksgiving Day was spent (1) trying and failing to find an open Laundromat to begin the washing/drying process, (2) finally giving up and washing clothing in the sparse washing machine in the infected room, a small community washing machine that was located on the same floor as the infected unit, and taking small loads of laundry directly from infected room straight to the washer in the new room, which fortunately was located right as you walked in and was a top-of-the-line LG washer with high heat and sanitize cycles, (3) all of this while trying to prepare Thanksgiving dinner for 6 people. (Room occupants were my husband and myself, our 2 children, and my husband's parents, one of which is disabled.) Fortunately, the room we were moved to was extremely clean and had been recently updated. Before we moved anyone in, we stripped and checked every mattress/box springs/ chairs/couches for signs of bedbugs. On Friday, we waited for management to contact us when the office opened for the day, since this is what we were told would happen. Over an hour had gone by with no contact. My husband and I then went to the front desk and the employee had an extremely nonchalant attitude about the situation..."oh, I am so sorry that happened to you. I have you down to contact." The manner in which this was stated was totally off-putting. She then mentioned that a pest inspector would be arriving some time that day to check the room. We were not given an estimated time, thus ruining another day of vacation. (I insisted that my husband or I were present when the inspector arrived.) Upon inspection, the inspector did positively identify a bedbug infestation in the master bedroom. While he was very guarded with his wording, he stated that it had probably been an ongoing infestation based on the number of adult bedbugs present. The additional bedroom did not show signs of bedbugs. He had been instructed to spray the room, but could not help us with the spraying of any of our luggage. We had to go out and buy our own bed bug sprays at the local home improvement stores and treat all of our items ourselves. My bites from the bedbugs began to show up late Friday, November 23th and continued to show up for the next several day. When the bites had peaked, I had over +90 confirmed bites by my physician. The bites were extremely itchy. Also, I work at a hospital and had to make sure that everything I wore was long sleeves during this time. The end result of this horrific vacation was a refund to my in-laws for the vacation, since the room had been charged on their credit card AND a "free night" at the resort when we book again. Well, I think it's safe to say that the "free night" will not be used by our family. The manager acted as if he was doing us a huge favor by refunding the stay and the free night. My husband asked about a monetary refund for all of the additional expenses we had incurred from having to buy cleaning products, not to mention the amount time spent washing and cleaning all items. If you are wondering, yes, we did seek legal counsel basically because of the lack of interest/care from the management. The lawyer stated that we could pursue, but that at the end of the day, the costs of us having to return to Florida plus the legal fees would outweigh any settlement amount from Wyndham. Our vacation ended up not being a vacation, but a true visit to the gates of Hell. While the pest inspector assured us that the possibility of the bed bugs getting into out luggage were slim and that we vigorously treated said luggage, the paranoia that has enveloped my family from this experience is real. Anytime we have a small spot show up that could look like a bite, everyone panics thinking "oh, no...could this be a bedbug." I scour online looking for bedbug reports anytime we travel and never had this location been mentioned in my searches. To date, I am terrified about booking any hotels/condos. I do know that when we travel again, I will be checking everything in our rooms before our belongings are moved in. Jennifer Florence, AL

• Bedbugs Found
• Requested Refund