CondoLux Vacation Rentals

Condolux can be found at Highway 17 S 1610. The following is offered: Real Estate Agents. The entry is present with us since Sep 8, 2010 and was last updated on Nov 14, 2013. In North Myrtle Beach there are 46 other Real Estate Agents. An overview can be found here.

***NOTICE***
This is a REVIEW of CondoLux and unit 1006 of Malibu Pointe. This is NOT a complaint as ALL complaints have been taken up with the company directly. In order to attempt to get a refund for my issues, I was forced to sign a waiver stating I would NOT make a complaint to any agency in an attempt to resolve the issue as I felt it was resolved with them. This statement is being posted for full disclosure to make this REVIEW as accurate as possible.

I rented unit 1006 at Malibu Pointe from August 23rd, 2014 to August 30th, 2014 from CondoLux for a rate that was very reasonable at $969 after all discounts I was eligible for. I booked via the CondoLux website and was very happy with the site. It was easy to use and payments were easy to make. The required a non-refundable $500 deposit upon reservation, which is pretty standard fare for the condo rental world. After that and getting an email receipt with my information, I had until 30 days prior to arrival to pay the balance in any fashion I wanted, which was very lenient. The balance was paid promptly via their website as well. They also did not charge any sort of processing fee for the payments via credit card, which was nice as a lot of other rental establishments pass their processing fees on to the customer, so that was refreshing.

I had a bit of concern after paying the final payment well before the 30 days prior to arrival in that I never got any sort of packet or other information confirming or detailing my condo rental aside from the payment confirmations, so I contacted CondoLux. They were very nice and informed me that I would receive the information packet via email 3 days before my check in. I was uneasy about this and thought that I should get some information sooner than that, but also understood why as they have an after-hours key box that you wouldn't want someone knowingly accessing before their estimated arrival.

Arrival time came quicker than I thought and we arrived to CondoLux around 3:30pm on August 23rd, 2014 to a packed parking lot and many people coming and going. After a 10 hour drive and 2 screaming children in the SUV, I was ready to relax. This is where the problems started occurring. I went into the CondoLux building, which was directly behind Malibu Pointe, and took the elevator to the 2nd floor. I was the only person in line which was nice and I quickly got my keys and signed my paperwork. They also made an imprint of my credit card for 'incidentals' as they called it and promised it would not be charged without my knowledge, authorization, and approval. This was, again, standard fare for condo rentals so I was OK with that. On a side note, the people that I saw coming out of the office before I went in all had welcome gift bags given to them. When I got my keys and paperwork, I was the only one that didn't receive one. Not sure if that was due to discounts I received or the place I chose to stay. Regardless, I didn't really think much of it.

We took the car to the parking garage, which I will note, has a very low height restriction of 6ft8in but we fit through just fine and found ample parking. We were given two parking tags to hang in the mirror so that we weren't towed. The first thing we noticed was that there were no luggage carts to be found. I saw various people with them so I knew the complex had some but it took about 15 minutes to locate one. This was understandable as it was check in time and everyone was doing the same thing. The parking garage was clean and free to debris which was nice. We took the elevator up to floor 10 and got off and found our room to be right beside the elevator, which was a nice location. Once we arrived at the room, we began having issues.

The first issue was with the keys we were provided. We were given three sets of keys. Two sets had two keys on the ring and the last had one key. None of the keys appeared to unlock the deadbolt on the door to the condo. They did unlock the outside storage unit room though. We attempted to unlock the deadbolt for about 10 minutes until we realized that the unit wasn't locked at all. We walked in and I immediately began noticing damage to the unit and stopped my family from unloading into the unit and began taking pictures.

I found numerous scuff marks, scratches, and gouges in the walls, doors, baseboards and furniture. I also noticed that the dryer in the unit was heavily rusted out in the drum, which was very shocking as this isn't something that just occurs all of a sudden. Rust like that occurs over time, which led me to believe that CondoLux was not or does not check their appliances regularly for damage and work ability. We also found numerous stains on the couch in the Condo as well as tears and rips in the two chairs present. The mattress under the cushions of the sofa was disgusting.... it had brown, black and red stains all over it and had no sheet or other covering on it. It would not have been fit for anyone in my family, let alone anyone else, sleeping on, with or without a covering on it. We also found a couple of human boogers on the walls and other various stains that appeared to be of bodily-fluid origin (not confirmed) that weren't cleaned.

I immediately called CondoLux at 3:53pm and spoke with someone named 'Bailey' or 'Dailey", It wasn't very clear what the name was. She was pleasant to speak with but didn't really seem to have much care that I was on the phone merely 23 minutes after checking in with all of these issues. She informed me that she would 'set up a work order for maintenance' to address the issue but was unable to tell me when they would be out and wasn't able to have them call me before they arrived. I was immediately in shock; How can you have a crew of people on your staff that you can't locate and, furthermore, how can you not even provide a timeframe on arrival? I was not happy with this response so I called back @ 4:05pm and spoke with someone named 'Bethany' whom informed me of the same thing but in a much more snide way but also informed me that the work order might not even be same day. I was in absolute shock at this point. I paid good money, deal or not, for this condo and expected that to include decent customer service. I called back again at 4:20pm and was promptly put on hold for around 10 minutes then hung up on. I called back again around 4:30pm and wasn't given a name but was promptly put on hold again and told I would speak with someone named either Arnette or Stewart and they were the DIrector and VP of CondoLux, respectively.

After another 5 minutes or so of hold time, a gentlemen answered by the name of Stewart. He informed me, coldly and uncaring, that again they were unable to provide a timeframe for this maintenance work order. He also informed me that to get the dryer replaced that they had to contact the owner of the condo and that wouldn't happen until Monday at the earliest. He also, snidely, informed me that per my paperwork I signed, no refunds would be given but they would 'look into some sort of compensation after this was all handled'. I was in absolute shock at this point. I am hundreds of miles away from my home, with my family, in a condo that has damage in it and no dryer to do laundry. At this point, it had been well over an hour dealing with this issue and I had to start moving our luggage into the unit, so we proceeded.

Around 5:45pm, the maintenance guy showed up unannounced. He had no name badge on him and didn't introduce himself at all upon arrival. He simply knocked, walked in right past us and asked "this the dryer?". We showed him the dryer, he looked at it and then was ready to leave. I asked him about the key issue and he rudely stated "I dont know anything about keys... I guess Ill look at it" or something to that effect and went to the front door and sprayed WD--40 into the lock and all over the floor and door. It fixed the issue and he left, leaving a pool of WD-40 for my children to slip in, which I promptly cleaned up.

All of this was very upsetting but the worst finding was black mold over all of the vents in the condo, both on the outside of the vents and inside the flaps of the vents. We found this after beginning to move all of our luggage in. This is a complete health hazard for anyone and should never have been allowed to occur, yet it had. Black mold doesnt just appear in an hour or two after their cleaning crew left, so I know it was there before I arrived and well before the cleaning crew arrived before my check-in. At this point, I again called CondoLux around 5:53pm and spoke with someone who's name I didn't write down and they informed me another work order would be entered but they didnt know when someone would be out, if at all today. At this point, I was enraged. I have a child with Asthma and both children are under the age of 4. My family, my children, nay no one, should EVER be required to live somewhere with BLACK MOLD growing, yet CondoLux showed absolutely NO empathy or desire to resolve this issue with any urgency.

At this point, I called CondoLux another nine times via their "emergency" line between 6pm and 9pm and spoke with various agents, all of which REFUSED to provide names and simply repeated the others in that a work order was entered and no one knows when it will be completed. I repeatedly informed them that they need to contact the owners of CondoLux or someone in charge to get this resolved asap. By 9pm I was at the grocery store purchasing cleaning supplies to clean the condo and mold myself. While at the store, I received a phone call from a restricted number and answered, speaking with someone named "Arnette" whom was the 'Director of Guest Relations'. We had a lengthy conversation which ended with him apologizing; I informed him that Monday morning at 8am I would be at their office behind the COndo and expected him to have his office waiting to discuss this travesty and come to some sort of resolution. He agreed but to 9am and informed me we would address everything then. I proceeded to clean the mold and other fluids from the unit for the rest of the evening, ending around midnight. Total time wasted on CondoLux' negligence and failure to provide was well over 8 hours of my own time.

After the first day of hell, Sunday was a fantastic first day of vacation. The Condo is right across the street from the beach and had ample room for chairs and all of our kids stuff. The pools were clean and fun to be in, albeit a little smaller than the pictures led to believe, but very nice none the less.

Monday morning arrived and I was in Mr. Arnette's office promptly at 9am with him waiting for me. We discussed everything that occurred and he seemed upset with the situation. He informed me that his people would be trained on the failures found here and that the dryer would be replaced as soon as possible, but the owner lived over seas so contacting him would be a challenge. We came to an agreement on compensation for 1/4 of the cost of my rental being refunded to me as well as free linen and trash maid service for the duration of my stay. He also provided me 4 tickets to the 'Medieval Times' show in Myrtle Beach, which he stated he did because he remembered I mentioned I had kids. He told me the tickets were purchased for me, but the tickets clearly stated they were bulk and provided to CondoLux. While I don't know this for sure, I have a feeling that those welcome bags I saw everyone else had included these tickets in them. Regardless, this saved me over $100 that I was going to spend anyways, so that was a nice surprise. They also offered me a 10% off discount on a future rental that I was allowed to use with any other offer, provided the total discount was no more than 25%. While the offer was nice, it wasn't anything special or out of their way. The compensation package he provided me for these issues was pretty standard fare for an issue of this size and, while I appreciated him taking the time to speak with me in person, I left with a pretty sour taste in my mouth still for the company as they really didn't do anything that 'WOW'd' me back to them.

Over the course of the rest of our stay, we encountered a few more issues. Namely, we found the dishwasher leaked water out of the side of the unit. We noticed this on Wednesday of our stay and I left a voicemail for Arnette on the number he provided on Thursday. I never got a phone call back but a maintenance guy arrived, again unannounced, to investigate the issue about 30 minutes after my voicemail. He spent less than 10 minutes in the unit, ran the dishwasher with no load for about 2 minutes as well as the washer for about 2 minutes with no load and didnt notice the leak reported on the dishwasher and didnt notice the sound reported on the washer so he left. Of course, later that evening in doing laundry, both issues occurred as usual and I took video and pictures as proof. I was so tired of dealing with CondoLux and their issues that I let it go at this point as it wasn't worth wasting the rest of our vacation time dealing with them again. We also noticed that the promised maid and linen service never showed on Wednesday or Thursday of our stay. No surprise there that CondoLux dropped the ball again...

The furnishings in the unit were also pretty sub-par. The couch with recliner, as mentioned before, was disgusting and probably the most uncomfortable piece of furniture I've ever sat on. My cheap $50 WalMart sleeper in college was magnitudes more comfortable than this piece of furniture. The same went for the double beds in the guest room and the King bed in the master bedroom. I do not have any sort of special mattress or bed at my own home and never wake up with any sort of stiffness or back ache nor does my wife. With these beds here, both myself, my wife, and my parents all had excruciating pain in our backs after just one night of sleeping on the beds. They are some of the most uncomfortable beds I've ever slept in, not to mention they are not kept up at all. The mattresses had sections where you could feel the springs coming through the padding and had divets in it from overuse. As for the dining area, unless you are eating during light hours, it is very dark. There is a metal piece covering the hole in the ceiling where a light is supposed to be to illuminate the dining area. It was pretty dark in that area after sunset, even with ALL of the lights in the unit turned on. The chairs at the table and the table itself were pretty flimsy and cheap but acceptable. Something you might find in a common area of a Red Roof Inn or other 2 star hotel was what it reminded me of. The kitchen was furnished with basic pots and pans, enough forks, spoons and knives for eight, and enough plates for the same. There were only four bowls and a very limited amount of cooking utensils. Basic fare again, nothing extraordinary. A couple plastic spoons and spatulas, some steak and cutting knives, a coffee pot which we didnt use, a blender, and some other various small items. The refrigerator was decent, had an ice maker and water dispenser with water filter but is pretty small. Nothing more than a day or two of items will fit in it. There was also an older vacuum in the unit that had dirt in the canister and hair all over the brushes. Wasnt clean but worked. There were 2 clean towels and wash cloths in each bathroom but no toilet paper or plungers. There was a very disgusting and noticeably used toilet bowl cleaner in the master bathroom that was not touched during my entire stay.

At the time of this review, we have just checked out of the Condo and I haven't had time to see if they ever provide the refund the promise. Furthermore, I requested Mr. Arnette to email me a synopsis of our conversation on Monday and he promised me he would email it same day. Still haven't gotten that email and we're now five days later. Again, not surprising that this company has dropped the ball.

Over all, my experience was pretty poor with CondoLux. I was not at all impressed by their response to my issues and was less impressed by their efforts to repair their image in mine and my family's eyes. Furthermore, they continued to drop the ball on things they promised and continued their same poor customer service with their maintenance folk even after this conversation I had with their Director.

In summary, I would probably not do business with CondoLux in the future. While their rates are very cheap compared to the competition, I absolutely do not mind paying double or even triple to be guaranteed a level of customer service that I expect. The fact that my vacation started the way it did and they did nothing to really draw me back as a customer is a tell-tale sign of how this company does business. I'm sure that, 90% of the time or more, their customer's never even complain or make a comment about their experience, good or bad. However, I am a different breed of customer and am a firm believer in doing business with your customers in a fashion in whcih you yourself would expect. I also believe that my experience should be shared with anyone and everyone looking to do business with CondoLux so they can use it to make a better decision on what fits them and their family. Was my experience a common one? I think not; However, ANY experience even remotely like mine should be handled with white gloves and every effort should be made to make amends and, in this case, I feel that they talked the talk but didn't walk the walk per se and, for that, they have more than likely lost my business. I wish everyone that does business with CondoLux good luck and hope that my experience here helps you in some way. All statements provided here are cold-hard facts, backed up with pictures and/or video and can be proven with date-stamped phone call records should the need ever arise should CondoLux feel the need to respond to this negatively with me.

[REVIEW TRUNCATED]. To read full review, visit:

www(dot)resortsandlodges(dot)com/lodging/usa/south-carolina/myrtle-beach/condolux-luxury-vacations.html

We rented an oceanfront condo in Crescent Keyes from CondoLux for the 4th of July. Our unit was ready on-time, and the nice lady at the desk was VERY helpful when we asked her for recommendations on local attractions.

CondoLux Vacation Rentals has the best prices on Myrtle Beach condo rentals, golf packages and beach homes. Period. Combine luxury with quality service.

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