USVI-On-Line

We were taking a 6 AM flight from BWI to St.Thomas on Friday the 21st of November. Cold, raw, and the promise of snow flurries. We had been told by American Airlines they wanted us there by 4 AM, even though we had pre-printed boarding passes and carry-on luggage only. There was no one there ahead of us, so we breezed through security and found ourselves with a couple of hours to kill in an airport that wasn't really awake for the day yet.

My daughter-in-law, Helene, had been up all night, too wound up to sleep, and so had I. We were running on empty. The grandson was excited as only an 11 year-old boy can be. He could hardly contain himself, he was so eager to get snorkeling. He wanted to wear his wet-suit on the plane under his clothes, but his parents told him he couldn't.

When time came to board, we found ourselves on the next-to-last group called, but our fears of no room for our luggage in the overhead bin were not fulflled. We settled in, only to be told that we would have to get off and go to another plane at another gate, as the one we were on had mechanical problems. Everyone on the plane grumbled, but we went on our way, boarded and took off, an hour later than planned.

The flight to Miami was uneventful, and we had allowed plenty of time for connections, so we didn't have to worry. We had to hike all over the Miami airport to get to our connecting flight to St. John, but we got there with time to spare. Bounced off the walls for a while, and our time finally came. I was so antsy, I really had trouble sitting still for the flight.

As we approached St. Thomas, I was thrilled to see the turquoise blue waters I had been missing. After we landed, we found our way into the terminal and ran for the free drinks. Helene and I drank ours, decided they were indeed good, and procede to head back for seconds. Husbands laughed, but they didn't get seconds!

We found a taxi and headed out with a family that was going to Red Hook ferry and on to the Maho campgrounds. Great conversation as we made our way to the Point Pleasant Resort. This was their first trip to St. John, they were curious about what to expect. We talked about our previous trips and what we thought they should try. In no time, we were at Point Pleasant, and went in to register.

They signed us up and called for their shuttle service to take us to our rooms.
The whole resort is built into the side of a mountain, all the rooms facing out over the water. Beautiful views! We were told they had three pools, though one was at the moment closed for cleaning. We had one right outside our building, though. We headed to our respective rooms to unload our luggage and we got together to decide what to do.

Our grandson, John, wanted to hit the pool immediately, but we all opted to head down to one of the restaurants on the resort, Fungi, which features Reggae music and Carribean food. It is right on the water, and very casual. The staff was delightful, and Helene and I decided that we owed it to the forum folks to make sure their Bushwackers were up to par. It took several of them for each of us to make up our minds that they were indeed of excellent quality.

The guys were in charge of a bucket of iced beers, laughing at me when I almost fell into the water off the deck. I was indeed relaxed. Dinner was great, and we called for the shuttle to get us back up to our rooms. Walking back was out of the question.

We got together in our room to laugh and talk until it was time to hit the sack. We were to head out to St. John and our Villa in the morning, and we were all tired.

We called ahead to Love City Villas, who is the agent for the Andante by the Sea Villa where we were staying. In spite of their offer to let us arrive early, we were told that we could not come to the Villa until 2 PM. The maids would still be cleaning. We were miffed, as we had been promised we could come in around noon, but there was no arguing with the agent. She said there was someone else who was staying there and we could not get there early. As the agreement to let us come early was only verbal, we had no grounds to stand on. We decided we would take advantage of the pools at the Resort in the morning, and then head over to the ferry.
Lights out, and I don't remember a thing until our alarm went off in the morning.
Kris

Great start!

Can I ask a favor though?

This might be helpful to other posters as well -- can you put some spaces within your future trip reports (new paragraphs, breaks, etc.).

It's so hard to read when when it's in one big block.

The eyes can get very tired and I often find when I see one big block of text that I just skip it altogether.

Which is too bad cause I love reading trip reports!

Thanks for the first installation!

More!


Case in point:

Great start! Can I ask a favor though? This might be helpful to other posters as well -- can you put some spaces within your future trip reports (new paragraphs, breaks, etc.).It's so hard to read when when it's in one big block. The eyes can get very tired and I often find when I see one big block of text that I just skip it altogether. Which is too bad cause I love reading trip reports! Thanks for the first installation! More!

Sorry about that. I didn't think about this. I just ifnished the second one with the same problem. I will see what I can do now.
Thanks for the tip!
Kris

If you're writing it in Word and cutting and pasting, you just have to go through the forum post and manually put in some spaces.

Happened to me too!

You can also edit your report afetr the fact, just hit the "edit" button and manually put in the spaces.

I've seen several TR's with the same format and I thought it was time to make the suggestion.

So, it's not just you

I just want to be able to read it!!

What a great statement:
"He could hardly contain himself, he was so eager to get snorkeling. He wanted to wear his wet-suit on the plane under his clothes, but his parents told him he couldn't."
That is so cute. I have felt that way, but of course, being an adult, I wouldn't actually do that.
Thanks for the start to a trip report.

I have to amend my report. My son and his wife mentioned some details I was fuzzy on about our plans to have an early arrival at our villa:

1. They originally told us we could check in at 10:00am.
2. They ended up telling us we couldn't get in until 3:00pm.
3. We did have all this in writing (email), but what could we do?

All told, it gave us a bad feeling about the quality of the Villa management company, which was confirmed by the "service" when we were there. It is a lovely villa, but I question their owners' choice of management. They had been with VIVA! and switched managements a few months ago.

While we refused to let all this spoil our vacation, it was frustrating. We felt that the Forumites needed to be informed about this problem so that they can be prepared for making Villa selections regarding Love City Villas. The house might be great, but evidently you can't count on them to respond to your questions and problems in a manner that you would expect from professional management companies.

Kris

I have never heard of Love City Villas (I'm guessing it's a new outfit?!). Anyhow, we used Private Homes for Private Vacations on this last trip. Their policy (which they clearly state in your pre-arrival paperwork and e-mail) is that if the house has been rented the previous week, you can check in and leave your luggage and grab your beach gear anytime after 10 a.m., but the housekeeping crew will tell you when they are finished and you can come back. If it has not been rented the previous week, then they will just let you check in anytime after 10 a.m. I thought that this way made perfect sense!

We had two girls stay on STT Friday night, and Mary-Eileen wanted to get them checked in early Saturday so they didn't waste any time. However, they decided to go to Mountaintop and have lunch at the Green House and catch the 1 p.m. (I think) downtown ferry and meet her later.

Unfortunately, we had never heard of Love City Villas, either. When my daughter-in-law contacted them about arrangements to meet us at the ferry dock, the agent commented that, as we were staying the night before in St. Thomas, she would arrange for us to be able to check into the Villa early, at 10 AM. We were pleased to hear this, as we wanted to get as early a start as possible.

We didn't ask for this, it was offered to us. In the course of emails back and forth, Helene was told that we only had to let them know which ferry we would be on and they would lead us to the house where we could settle in.

The fact that we couldn't get in as early as promised was disappointing because we hadn't assumed we could get it, it was offered to us and promised. We had set up our travel plans to this arrangement. This combined with the lack of attention to problems we encountered (they never did come out to fix the lock on the sliding door, we had to use a broom handle as a charlie-bar to keep it secure) made us feel they were not taking their responsibilities seriously.

We have always used Vacation Vistas and Lisa Durgin before, and she was perfect. We never had a problem with her, and expected the same sort of service.

I don't mean to sound bitter, but I don't want anyone else to walk into this sort of thing blindly, either. It is frustrating, to say the least. To spend so much money on a trip, spending months dreaming about it, you don't need to encounter this sort of attitude.
Time on St. John is too precious to waste being angry.

Aside from the early check in problem, our problem was that we were also unable to get any of our problems fixed while we were there. We had a sliding glass door that was in one of the main floor bedrooms that couldn't lock, and this posed a security concern. We have heard of problems with burglary on the island, and we felt vulnerable with this. They promised to fix it, but no one ever did. We used the Charlie Bar (a broom stick handle, which happened to be just the right size) for a lock the whole time. We also had problems with the Hot Tub not working correctly - it kept turning itself off. When we called, my son was told to perform various fixes, some which involved a rather dangerous position leaning over a railing. This occured several times, and yet no one came out. He was instructed to fix it himself. I found this unacceptable, given that it seemed to be a recurring problem. I am aware that different villas can present different problems, and I know one bad experience doesn't mean the management company is inherently bad, but we felt that there were too many things all together that led us to feel that their concern for taking care of the villa was not what we would have expected. I am sorry if anyone took offense, it is certainly not my intent to offend anyone. I just felt that it is important to let people know when we have come across a problem that they might need to know about.
Kris

I am sure that they would say these things are false. If I were them, I would deny this also. However, I stand by my statements. If they wish to contact us, we will talk with them. However, I am curious as to the sudden appearance of 3 posters, new to the boards, who have never posted before, who have suddenly risen up to complain about our reviews.

I am sorry if it seems to have upset some people, but I feel that I owed the board an honest review of what we experienced. I am not saying that they are a very bad company, only that we had unresolved issues with them, and we felt it could have been handled better.

I'm just catching up to this report and I'm wondering if you have or will say who you were dealing with at Love City Villas? They handle the management of the property that I am renting next year and your reports concern me.
PM me if you feel that is more suitable.
Thanks.
Mary Beth

mcpenguin5 wrote:I am sure that they would say these things are false. If I were them, I would deny this also. However, I stand by my statements. If they wish to contact us, we will talk with them. However, I am curious as to the sudden appearance of 3 posters, new to the boards, who have never posted before, who have suddenly risen up to complain about our reviews.

I just want to make clear that I removed the posts that are obviously missing from this thread and deleted the users who made them. They were obviously done in concert, not in good faith, and against forum policy.

I don't think Love City Villas is a bad operation, I just don't think they are as professional as they could be. I didn't intend to turn anyone off on them, I just didn't feel they gave us the quality of service I would expect when you are paying this much for a vacation. We were by and large happy with their service as regards getting our rental car ready for us as soon as we were off the ferry, showing us that there was a potential problem with "Christmas Bush" near the villa, which is a hazard similar to poison ivy, only much more potent. They were friendly enought, just we got off on the wrong foot with them, and it never got better.
I also feel that if you say your can check in, you mean that you have the run of the house. Checking in, to me, means that I can go put my stuff away and settle down to swim in the pool or whatever. If they had told us that we could bring our things to the house but not stay, we would have understood that. It was just misleading.
I am sorry to have stirred up such a tempest in a teapot, and hope that this can calm down now.
thanks to all of you for your understanding in this.
Kris

I have been off the Internet all weekend and was just catching up with this thread and I noticed the message by Anthony. I am not sure if the person/people? in question had their posts deleted, but I'd be curious to see what they had to say, especially because I'm guessing if someone is using the username "LoveCityVillas," they would somehow be associated with them. And if a villa outfit can't play well with others, I'd just as rather not give them my business.

I have no problem with honest, objective reports. I am not talking about "I didn't like our waitress" commnets. I'm talking about documentable issues like the emailed committment to have an early occupancy, or renegging on the villa rate, or a hidden charge that was never disclosed before arrival. I do have a problem with post that suggest there is a problem or report a problem but will not tell us who they are talking about. That leaves the rest of us to try them not knowing that someone had a problem. We may find that the first forumite was right, but now we are committed to that villa, rental agency, or other business.

With clear reports, I can make my own judgements on who to use and who to avoid. I asked for comments on dive shops last year and got all sorts of responses. They evaluated Sawyer, Low Key and 6-pac. The comments were all over the spectrum. All three got reports that characterized them as miracle workers to incompetents. We got specific issues spelled out for us where some of you had a particularly good or bad experience. Using their comments and balancing that against the things we think are important, we picks a shop to use for our initial certification.

How did that work out? It was excellent. We were completely satisfied with our experience. Since then, Wounderwoman used the other two shops and confirmed that we made the right choice the first time. That doesn't mean that there was something "wrong" with the other two. It's just that we made the right choice for us.

Let's keep those reports, good and bad, coming. We are not going to get to STJ often enough to make all the mistakes ourselves. Help us out by giving honest objective reports.

JIM