Casa Sonho Villa

3 readers found this review helpful

Hi all have just read the reviews on casa nightmare unfortunatley too late!!.
We were staying there from 26th Aug 09 for 2 weeks. but we only stayed for 1 day due to the state of the villa. So we had to pay for a new villa as we did not want this to spoil our holiday. Absolutely everything the previous reviews say is true infact i rate it worse, and the owners are obviously in complete denial as to how bad thier villa is.
Was the pool full of algi and slime for anyone else?
Would love to hear from anyone who stayed there as we WILL be persuing the owners.
jason@jasonchamberlain.orangehome.co.uk

1 reader found this review helpful

I read the review posted by Miss Carter re. your stay at Casa Sonho and I would concur with everything that you said. I would however suggest that the distance of the Villa from the road along the track was nearer half a mile in my opinion. We had hire cars and were very concerned that either the suspension would be damaged or the paintwork scratched. We did not have power cuts but stayed at the villa over a month before you so we may have been there before that particular problem became apparent.
We also were a party of 12 and we suffered with a lack of services that were supposed to have been provided. No cleaning or laundry. Iron not working. Outside lights not working. Pool not cleaned. Not enough fold down beds and not enough linen. We had to do our own laundry. The list goes on.
I complained to the Owners Direct website as we did not get our deposit and it has now been removed from the site,
Can you e-mail me your contact details at jamie@paulamar.co.uk as we may be able to share the cost of pursuing the owners. I have their details.

1 reader found this review helpful

Hello,
I am writing to you in regards to a holiday I have just taken at the above mentioned villa between the dates of 12th – 19th August 2009. There were a group of twelve people, including myself that spent a week at Casa Sonho, and within our group there was a pregnant women and 4 children, 3 of whom where aged 5 and under.
We booked our one week break in 2008 and had all been greatly looking forward to our holiday in the months prior.
The problems started as soon as we left Faro airport. The instructions the owner had given were unclear and even with the taxi drivers putting the information into their Sat Navs, they still drew a blank, a trip that should have taken us 30 minutes lasted 2.5 hours, infact at one point the taxi drivers were so frustrated we even feared they would drop us at the road side as they couldn’t make any sense of where we were going.
When we finally found the so called ‘Luxury Villa,’ we were met with a dirt track that led up a hill, the track was at least ¼ mile long and so hazardous the taxi drivers who were booked to do our return journey to the airport refused to pick us up from the villa and would only pick us up at the main road. Please be reminded that we are in a group of 12, at no time did the villa owners make any indication that having your own transport was imperative and that it would be impossible to leave the villa on foot due to the nature of this winding dangerous dirt road, which I might add was unlit at night.
Please also note that Moncarapacho is not in the main part of the Algarve, so most of the people only speak Portuguese and only a few a small bit of English, so trying to organise taxi’s proved very difficult, one because of the language barrier and two because no one new were the Villa was, it was incomplete isolation and no where near any shopping facilities! Again this was something that was not highlighted before our arrival and needs to be made patently clear to any prospective holidaymakers!!
As we entered the villa we found that there was no electricity, infact not only was there no electricity there was no water. The electricity powers the underground water pump!! After making our discovery we were got straight onto the managing agents a couple who had just taken over the management of the property who had no idea why this had happened. The electricity board had by then closed so we had to wait until the morning to try to find out the problem was. At no time did the villa owners contact us, apologise, try to put our minds at rest, all we had was the couple managing the property who told us simply that they had already had problems with the owners and they had only been managing the property for a short time.
We spent 26 hours in total with no electricity or water, we had to cook by candlelight, wash with a bottle of water and flush the toilet using the swimming pool water, children were scared, it was distressing experience for everyone. The next day we found out that the reason we had been put through all of this was because the owners had not paid their electricity bill after numerous reminders and so had been cut off.
The electricity was then switched back on towards the end of the following day after the owner got round to paying the outstanding money, please note we called him about 20- 30 times during the course of the day before he bothered to call us back and even though the electricity was on, it would often cut out on numerous occasions when more then one appliance was being used. That is from the appliances that worked, the electric Kettle and the Iron were both faulty – good thing we brought our own iron!!
After hoping that all was now well and that we would have no problems with the water or electricity, the gas for the house then ran out on the morning of our penultimate day along with the gas for the outside BBQ. The gas for the BBQ was changed by the managing agent, however we had to pay ourselves for the gas to supply the house at a cost of 70 Euros without this we would have been unable to use the cooker or have hot water
There were also a number of other issues with the property in addition to the ones above that I have mentioned:
1) The childrens’ playground area was unsafe, swings and play equipment were on an uneven surface
2) The area around the villa was arid, covered in debris and completely unmaintained
3) The villa was supposedly set in an acre of private ground, however anyone could access the property, often we would see a gentleman walking his dog past the villa of a morning
4) No security, no safe in the house and some of the doors and windows did not shut properly
5) A locked store room next to the kitchen full of food and other stuff which was letting off an awful smell
I’ve got to say this was probably the worst holiday experience I have ever had. I am appalled by the bad management of this property and the complete disregard shown by the owners of this villa. How they could ignore our phone calls when we were stuck in that first 24 hours being completely aware of our situation and knowing full well we had a pregnant women and 4 children in the group is beyond me.
We have also since learnt that many other people have not received their deposits back,
This Villa is still being let and money happily taken from people, none of us want anyone else to have to suffer what we went through!