Reviews of Chas Everitt - Head Office - Johannesburg

This is not a review, it is a complaint about the accommodation that I rented at Chakas Cove from 3-7 April. I wrote to the manager at the Ballito office, and I was quite astonished that I didn't receive any reply to my letter of 16 April. without more ado, I am sending you a copy of the letter I wrote to Cathy Keough, the holiday consultant, in the hope that someone will take notice of my complaint.

Dear Cathy

Thank you for the refund of the deposit that was put into my account, received yesterday.

I would just like to tell you that I was very disappointed in the accommodation that was supplied for myself and my sister (a visitor from the UK, and left her with a bad impression of accommodation at the coast) at Chakas Cove at the beginning of this month.

I don’t know when you last visited this apartment, but when we arrived, it was not very clean. We had been travelling from Pretoria since 9 am that morning, and arrived at the apartment, after collecting the keys from your office, at around 4pm. We were just glad to get out of our travelling clothes and take off our shoes. However, after walking around the apartment for a few minutes, checking this and that, our bare feet were black — I don’t think the floors had been swept or washed for some time. Thus we had to mop the floors ourselves.

Secondly, on reviewing and checking the inventory on the counter, after the second page, I decided that it was useless to carry on, as many of the items shown on the inventory weren’t even there, and there was no way of writing on the inventory as it was laminated.

The cistern in the toilet in the second bathroom was continually running water, albeit very slowly (and wasteful), and on inspecting the cistern, I saw that the cock and ball equipment was held together with a piece of wire — this I informed Belinda when we went into town to get some provisions. There was also nothing in the bathroom to put toiletries on — except the top of the cistern, and nothing in the shower to hang soaps and cloths. I also informed Belinda that the plug on the adaptor in the second bedroom was faulty, as the light kept going on and off — the flex of the plug into the wall was broken, causing a bad connection. The bedside lampshade in the 2nd bedroom was broken and full of fluff and cobwebs, absolutely disgusting — not a good sign of the housekeeping. We didn’t see ONE cleaner in the few days we were there, and we certainly weren’t out each and every day.

The prospectus of the apartment mentions that there is a swimming pool, but it didn’t say that it was on the other side of the road, in the other half of Chakas Cove. Being pensioners, that didn’t go down very well with us, that’s false advertising!

I also think that the amenities in the kitchen were of very poor quality — I didn’t expect plastic drinking glasses, although there were other glasses too. For self catering purposes, there were no measuring jugs, etc. The fridge also had cracked shelves and pieces of the plastic door containers were missing, also the covering on the oven door handle was broken. And the ice trays were empty — fortunately we had bought a big bag of ice while getting provisions. At least there was hot water so we could shower or bath when we arrived. Having been to self-catering places before, I took my own basics, tea towels, salt and pepper, etc, washing up liquid, etc — what a pathetic 100 ml bottle of washing up liquid supplied!!

Although we had use of the TV, all we were able to watch was 4 stations of news, which just went round and round until we were sick of watching it. We did manage to find ONE channel with a National Geographic channel, but otherwise it was a dead loss. Having no wifi was also difficult, although we did manage to pick up wifi on someone else’s in the complex, which was very useful, otherwise we were completely cut off from the outside world.

I don’t know who the owners of this apartment are, but I would like them to know that they are overcharging their tenants for under-rate amenities. At almost R1000 per day, compared to other places, I think the place needs a good clean-up. THE ONLY GOOD THING ABOUT THIS APARTMENT IS THE STUNNING VIEW OF THE SEA AND BEACH, and watching the tides go in and out and waves breaking in thunderous noises was exhilarating. We also had the luck to see one pod of dolphins go by but quite far out.

I think I’ve had my rant about the apartment, so you won’t be getting any favourable quotes from me to put in your next booking. I’m also sorry to have to mention all this, but I feel that you and the owners ought to know about all the little things that can make or break an otherwise lovely holiday.

I hope you will take the time to reply to my email and give me your comments.

In the meantime, thank you for everything else.

Sincerely
Regards
Jill de Villiers.

I hope this reaches the right person who can make improvements on the accommodation, so that the next people to rent will have a better impression of it than we did.

Yours sincerely
Jill de Villiers