10121 A warning

Were the owners English or Italian?

Did you get a receipt detailing the payment you made for the electricity?

They were Italian owners and I believe we did get a receipt, although not sure how detailed it was. One of our party dealt with them as I was engaged packing at the time! I will double-check it.

Hi Derek
Thats just taking the pi$$, if you rent an hotel room, do you get an extra charge for turning the lights on, or using the kettle, IMHO, if you rent a house/room/ whatever, all the charges should be built in...........when was the last time you hired a car and been charged for the wear on the tyres.............contact them and ask for your money back.....threaten to name and shame :no::no::no:

€150!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It takes us 4 months to use that much electricity! I would certainly follow it up and threaten to name and shame. Was it their own website or an agencies - if the latter, take it up with them as well.

[quote=DerekM;94191]Hi
Obviously we don't want to use the forum to publicly name and shame them, but if anyone else is considering staying in the area and is concerned, then we're happy to privately let you know which villa it is.[/quote]WHY NOT??!!?? IMO, this is the perfect place for such warnings. There was a recent thread on the SlowTrav message board about the exact same thing, so unfortunately this does happen.

It isn't unusual to have utilities costs as extras, particularly if the owner knows they have a very expensive house to run! Did you have any air-con units in any of the bedrooms? How big was the pool? Dd you have a well pump? How big was the house? Was the water heated by electricity?

I know of one (large) house with a very large pool where the electricity runs at more than €75 a week in the summer......

To add to the point Charles made, electic oven, electric hob, hairdryers,washing machine, dish washer?, and how large a house and how many in the party?.I know most owners charge extra for the gas in the winter as it is so expensive here, but if yours was a luxury villa with all mod cons,perhaps the charge wasnt so unrealistic?
Just a thought.
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These extra costs are very common and you wil find they are mentioned on many holiday booking sites. I agree they can leave a sour taste and spoil an otherwise lovely holiday. I would rather be charged extra for utilities as part of the overall fully inclusive price so you know exactly what the total amount will be. To charge this amount on top of an already expensive villa price just seems very tacky.

I think that some owners J&C like to charge for what is actually used, which is in a way more fair, rather than jacking up the price for everyone, however this should be clearly stated in the terms and conditions so that the holiday maker gets no nasty surprises.
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It was stated on the website in this case Angie.

Whoops, my fault for skimming, so it is.
But I have now demonstrated for myself the dangers of jumping to conclusions.
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We recently had exactly the same thing happen and what a shock it was to be told the extras came to 150 euros for 10 days. This was taken from the deposit and although there was air conditioning in the main living area, it was a blatent overcharge and not mentioned in the small print when we booked.

Best way is to try and get the meter reading when you arrive, and then maybe the night before you leave. Multiply the difference by approx 23 Euro cents, and that should be the consumption figure.
Approximate rate for a supply over 3Kw is 18 cents Kw + additional charges approx 3 cents + IVA @ 10%.
In Nov-Dec/Jan-Feb, the coldest months, my daily use is approx 50Kw. Therefore 50x10x0.23 =115 Euros.
May- June 16Kw daily, so for 10 days 37 euros.
Hopefully they are not including the standing charges, as they would have to pay them, even if the house was empty.

I think it`s quite common for Italians to charge for electricity and gas consumption separately. We have friends that rent out their holiday home and they`re surprised that we include it in the rental. However, they always take a reading when the person arrives and at the end of their stay. 150E sounds very expensive but I suppose if it`s a huge luxury villa with all mod cons, it could be about right. Both elecricity and gas are much more expensive in Italy - although with our recent 35% price hike, we could soon be catching up!!!

If they are heating the pool electrically, then that could be the cost factor. The whole house here runs on electricity apart from the gas hobs on the oven. Always best to check the meter on arrival & prior to departure and then at least you have a point to argue about.

Sorry but i think it serves you right , if you pay that much for a villa they think you have money coming out of your ears , visit Le marche and get some real value for money , views and people just as good

[quote=rower;94227]Sorry but i think it serves you right , if you pay that much for a villa they think you have money coming out of your ears , visit Le marche and get some real value for money , views and people just as good[/quote]

Paying a lot of money for a service or goods shouldn't mean that being ripped off is a part of the deal. And being house owners in Rome and having the villa in Umbria as their second home, they're obviously not short of a cent or two themselves.

Actually, we had looked at Le Marche as a first choice but there seem to be far fewer villas for let there compared to Umbria and Tuscany. And we couldn't track one down to suit our needs at the time we made our booking. Perhaps you could point us in a useful direction for future reference?

I take the points of some of the other posters about meter readings and that it was a big villa and energy costs in Italy are higher than the UK. But, saying that, there was no air con, the pool wasn't heated, all bulbs were low energy and being summer there were no heating requirements apart from water for showers. (The cooker was gas and oddly, they didn't charge for consumption of that!) So, overall it does seem excessive for what was used. It did occur to us that they may just have been averaging out for the whole year by dividing by 24.

We'll chalk this up to experience and make sure to do more digging before booking in future.

Some good responses particularly the read the metre advice but we don't know the full facts. ie How many people in the group? So many questions could be asked...Running a large swimming pool is very expensive indeed. The rental property most probably had more the 11 KW. of electricity.....why not divide 150 euros between each of you and put it down to experience. Can see no harm in naming the place either!

Just out of interest Derek , how many were in your party?.
And I think forum rules do say no nameing or shaming, someone will correct me if I am wrong, I think because it can be open to abuse.
I hope that another time you have a better experience Derek, and book early for Marche, I can think of some lovely properties out here.
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Thought I'd take a look at what DerekM had posted in the past ....interesting reading....his holiday's in Italy...

my wife son and in laws have just finished a holiday in an apartment based agriturismo with swimming pool in Abruzzo.... two apartments... air conditioned... breakfast includes in price... 17 hectares of land to wander around... bags of fresh vegetables and fruit left outside doorways a couple of times during the stay... finally on day before departure on attempting to pay... a discount was offered on the already signed and agreed price... plus they handed over two excellent bottles of their red wine.... and no they didnt charge any extra for either the cooking gas or electricity...

[url=http://www.villafiore.eu/]Agriturismo Villa Fiore[/url]

i think the difference in attitude just is such good business sense here i am raving over a place because they put in an effort to make people feel welcome... which costs them little in terms of money... not talking about the discount...just the gifts... and the other attitude for what counts as almost pennies in the sense of the total spend of Dereks group has lost them any chance of bookings via his friends and colleagues... the sort of bookings which cost no advertising revenue just the use of a bit of common sense in to how to treat your customers.....

A couple of years ago, I rented a small apartment in Florence for a holiday, and the electricity was to be charged separately. When I arrived, the landlady and I wrote down the meter reading, so that I'd be charged the right amount when I left.

However, after a few days, I got a card in the letter box from ENEL to say that the power would be off the following day because of some work. For no particular reason, I noted the meter reading again.

I was out the next day, but came home to find that the entire meter board for the apartment block had been replaced with a new one, and the new meters, naturally, had all started at zero.:smile:

At the end of my stay, the landlady was quite happy to add my interim reading to the final one. It was all quite amicable, and nobody felt cheated: each was happy that the other was trustworthy.

Thanks for that John I had a look at the site and it looks fantastic.Possibly one day when we actually get a holiday we'll go!!

Incidently I know there are a few other web designers/programmers here and I wondered why when you are on this page [url=http://www.villafiore.eu/eng/home.html]Agriturismo Villa Fiore[/url]
and you click view source, scroll down to bottom of the page and within the html tages is about a paragraph of porn sites!!!!!ie titles of links to porn sites.

This is only visible when you click view - source (I tried as I liked the photogallery and was going to try to copy the java script that created it.)

John possibly you could tell the owners as they either don't know about it and its some scam by the web designer or they are wanting to create extra traffic by linking to porn sites??Seems rather strange to me.

Looks like probably some hacker has got in and edited the code to add those other links.

[quote=myabruzzohome;94384]I tried as I liked the photogallery and was going to try to copy the java script that created it.[/quote]

Off-topic, I know, but the photogallery is done with [url=http://www.airtightinteractive.com/simpleviewer/]Simple Viewer[/url]. Its a real goodie and its free.

As I am sitting next to the computer expert in the family I asked the question....
Why those porn links?
Reply...most probably an attempt to improve the Agriturismo Villa Fiore's Google ratings. The links will be "highly visited". If that's the case I for one don't approve of such methods being convent educated!!

we spoke with the family regarding the hidden coding on the web site and they were pretty upset to hear about it... sent them an email with the coding within full view...

they passed this on to their web master...and it is now sorted in the sense that it is gone from the site...

i think as regards using methods such as these to establish ranking it would make very little sense... first the optimum amount of links is generally around the 100 or so and this had 300 plus...

further any site needs relevance ...rather then quantity... careful choice of relevant keywords and tags allow a much better chance of your site being pulled out ahead of others...

so a hardly think that unless their web master is a complete cretin he would have or should have used the method above...

so thanks Becky or pointing the problem out... hopefully it will be secured more against these types of input... you never know he might decide to add some real search engine meta and descriptive text in there...

Thanks adriatica agree with the sentiment and well done Villa Fiore. But the geek says that it is so common for Italian websites to have such " hidden coding" to enhance their Google rating that BT for one, often reject emails from Italian internet providers. Now I am going to look a bit closer when searching for places to stay in Italy!!!

Yes it would make me furious too and I'm glad you were able to let the family know John.It would probably be a good idea for anyone with a site hosted by Italian server to look or get someone to look at every page and check their 'source' htm view!

We use holidayrentals.com. Excellent site.

I have to say that although we've had no major issues or real problems and and have rented 4 houses over 3 years from them, in our experience we'd now only rent from English owners in future. Not a racial thing, but from what we've found, English owners seem to know what English families want - books to read, games for the kids in the evenings, spare bulbs/loo rolls/pens and pencils etc, stacks and stacks of tourist info, and lots of little touches and things that you probably wouldn't think of until you got there. Italian owners just priovide the house - nice though it may be - and it has to be said that those we have rented off have been exceptionally kind and helpful, even providing us with a couple of bottles of good wine and very concerned that all is ok. However they do seem to leave out certain details and we DO ask the questions before booking. Questions like ...

Question:
"Is it quiet?" - ie it's our one holiday of the year, we both have stressful jobs, we want a quiet, relaxing time.

Answer:
"Yes, the occasional car passes but it is quiet" (...apart from the 2 large dogs next door that bark at the slightest micro-sound all night and set off ALL the other dogs for a 10km radius - for hours and hours and hours EVERY single night! And the 'odd' car and/or truck that passes every 5 minutes, or the Pizzeria opposite that is full on Thursday and Friday nights and very noisy until 2am or the house owners live in the big house with the big dog 5m away that overlooks the rental house and was conveniently missing from ANY of the photos or that the housekeeper lives in the adjoining apartment they failed to even mention existed!).

We also now go Tuesday to Tuesday - cheapest RA flights on Tuesdays. Last year and the year before we flew Friday - Monday and stayed in a hotel on the nights either side as it was £270 cheaper than flying Saturday or Sunday - INCLUDING the hotels! (we stayed 14 days btw!)

We like to go leaving something for the next tenants or the owners. A couple of beers in the fridge and a nearly new pack of Lavazza for example (we were ecstaticly happy last year when we discovered that you can buy it anywhere in the UK and now drink nothing else!). We also like bring home a little something unusual - like last year discovering that Knor do Porcini flavoured stock-cubes!

This might be a generalisation and not true in every case but it's how we've found it to be.