We arrive on Saturday to an empty property with nothing set up. One of my group members was able to get in touch with the host who owns the property. They had no idea we were coming. They made sure to remind me over and over that it was VRBO's fault that they did not see our reservation in their calendar and apologized profusely. Unfortunately, an apology doesn't mean it didn't happen and it really set the tone for the rest of the events that would transpire. VRBO did send me a notification about my check in 2-3 days prior to us arriving and my communication with the host on the VRBO messaging platform a month ago seemed like enough confirmation to me.
After an hour or so after arriving, a team of people came to set up the property -- outdoor furniture, kitchen, rooms, bedding, etc. They were all very nice. But this means that we had to go occupy our time for 4 hours before the place was close to usable -- after a day of travel that started at 5 AM for most.
The first night, a electrical surge took out the A/C (as well as a handful of other stuff). So, after an extremely frustrating conversation with the owner who wanted to remind me that this was an act of god and not his fault, they assured me that they were trying to get it fixed. From Sunday morning to Wednesday evening, we had no A/C in the bedrooms, the pool pumps didn't work, there was no hot water heater (I had my first hot shower on my birthday after being there for 5 days), the washing machine didn't work, the oven didn't work (which was unfortunate for when we tried to have birthday meals cooked).
So that means we had a live-in electrician (aka random people) from Tuesday until the day we left on Saturday. There were electricians who dug up the driveway to run some electric line, which unfortunately meant I went to close the automatic driveway gate, I had to dig out the gravel with my hands to get the gate to close.
The hot pot in the kitchen broke. The toilet in one of the bedrooms would leak out of the top tank, making it unusuable. One of the overhead fans in the bedroom did not work and the fans in 2 other bedrooms were barely strong enough to provide a draft.
I did what I guess a host might've done for their guests (but obviously not required) -- I drove 30 minutes to find an appliance store and bought myself and my other guests 3 standing fans to help us sleep at night.
I have one good thing to say -- the housekeeper Sinai was a saving grace for our stay at this location