Carolina Cottages

Highly recommend, great doing business with them as a rental agent, have very good people who return calls promptly.

While I understand that unforeseen things do occur during moves, the problems we encountered during our first week in our new rental home were excessive, and more disturbingly, were met with sheer irreverence by Carolina Cottages. I don't have a problem calling Terminix to handle the dozen and a half wasp nests outside, or hiring a lawn care provider because that wasn't included in our $1500/month rent. I cannot, however, excuse the lack of general knowledge from the rental agency, in regards to our new house. We were told when we moved in that everything was electric (and that we were on well water). Thank goodness I had the foresight to call the water company, because we were actually on city water! Unfortunately, I didn't think to look up a gas company (since we were misinformed about having all electric). Two weeks later, our heat and hot water were cut off (for 5 days - over a weekend - during a cold snap) because we were never told to transfer the gas line into our name. That was a basic bit of information that would have been quite useful from the property management company. When I called them to seek advice, their attitude was short, aggravated, and unhelpful - responding with "WELL, I JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT TO TELL YOU" on multiple conversations. They have taken their sweet time in responding to our needs and requests. We had mold and mildew growing in our basement that I had to practically pitch a fit to get them to inspect. In fact, I paid an inspector $250 of my own money to come out and identify some of the major health concerns. I paid a carpet cleaning company out of our own pocket to come and remove the pet urine smell and dried poop stains from the basement carpet, because Carolina Cottages refused to have it cleaned/removed (and it is still a biohazard down there - an issue we've now been told we can handle ourselves if we want to pay out of pocket to have the nasty, smelly carpet removed). We haven't been able to use the entire basement floor of the house since we moved here, and we've been here for 7 weeks! We couldn't use the kitchen sink for 2 days when a pipe burst in the crawl space, and the only bathtub in the house STILL doesn't drain properly, so the kids can't take showers in their own bathroom! That works out wonderfully, having a 5 and 6 year old, let me tell you! One would think the combination of one or more of these things would at least entitle us to a small break on our rent for a month or two (or until they fix the deficiencies), but not Carolina Cottages! They took their money and haven't offered us any kind of refund, break in rent until we can at least use 100% of the house we are renting, or option to leave, or apology. Nothing. When I complained to one of the higher up managers about all of the aforementioned items (and then some), she assured me she would check into all of the issues we were having, and she would personally see they were fixed. The next week, she sent me an email stating she was sorry but my requests were met with "bad timing" and there was really nothing she could do to help me and my family. She smiled to my face when I was in her office, and assured me everything would be fixed, then the next week wrote me that her "fiduciary responsibility is to the owner", not to me. Wow. The way we've been treated by this company makes me very worried for not only ourselves, but for all the other families in Western North Carolina who are dealing with their unacceptably crude idea of customer service. If you are going to rent a property through Carolina Cottages, BEWARE!!!! You may be met with the same level of disservice we have, if something goes wrong. I wouldn't recommend using Carolina Cottages to my worst enemy.