I have rented many vacation properties and know that minor problems come with the territory, but Stay Montana was something completely different. By far my worst experience ever with either VRBO or AirB&B.
Their customer service team seemed to think that I should simply take it in stride that, when we arrived, the unit had no hot water, the private hot tub didn’t work, and there was no key for the shared hot tub.
Not sure why I expected there to be a working hot tub. Maybe it was the title for the listing:
Hidden Village Hideaway - Private Hot Tub - Minutes from Big Sky Resort
Or, maybe it was the hot tub cleaning fee that was included in my billing, the one I complained about because it seemed excessive given there was already a substantial cleaning fee for the unit. I was told the fee was justified just a day before my arrival. Even the customer service rep didn’t know there was no working hot tub until her operations manager checked into it. Everyone from me to billing to customer service had missed the fine print stating that the hot tub was broken.
It took an hour for the customer service rep to learn what I was supposed to know from the outset. The hot tub was broken. I was told to use the community hot tub. Unfortunately, they failed to provide a key for the community hot tub.
I was also silly enough to assume a condo would have hot water. No worries, I was told, they would fix the hot water and bring the key the next day.
When I raised these issues, I expected profuse apologies and some effort to comp me for my troubles. Maybe a reduction in rent for the non-functioning hot tub and a free night for a unit with no hot water. What did I get?
A generous offer to remove the charge for cleaning the broken hot tub from my credit card.
I guess I was lucky, a friend arrived at another Stay Montana Unit the same night and found it was owner occupied! At 10:30 at night, after driving all day, they had to find a new place to stay while enduring subzero temperatures. And then had to move the following night.
Stay Montana’s utter lack of concern provides a case study in how NOT to provide customer service. In fact, I am saving the texts to share with my customer service team.
Bottom line: STAY AWAY FROM STAY MONTANA.