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  Additionally, we found that items that we assumed belonged to your family had not been removed or stored prior to our visit. There were clothes in closets and drawers, along with children's toys and boogie boards and home maintenance items such as paint [and] varnish cans. There was a full laundry basket of unfolded towels and dirty clothes in the laundry room, as well as dozens of household items stored untidily under the kitchen sink and in the laundry room, not to mention an empty container of Tide cleaning detergent.

  As our first 24 hours in the house progressed, we realized that there were several essential appliances that simply did not work, including:

  * the refrigerator and freezer. While we were able to maintain the refrigerator portion somewhat cool by turning the cooling dial to its maximum level, the freezer did not work at all.

  * the dishwasher. We loaded it to capacity Sunday night and Monday morning after our initial meals, added detergent and set it to run when we left for the beach Monday morning. Upon our return seven hours later, the dishwasher was still running. We had to unload the dishwasher and wash all of the dishes, which were caked with dried soap.

  * the toaster. The manual "pop-up" latch was broken, which required two of us to jury-rig a method for getting the toast out before it overcooked by turning down the "light/dark" knob and pulling forcefully up on the toasting lever. My husband and I sustained several small burns on our fore and middle fingers, since we were too embarrassed to let anyone else use the toaster.

  Additionally, there were several areas of the house in serious need of repair:

  * The ceiling in the first floor bathroom had an obvious plaster patch over the toilet. On Monday evening, that patch fell through, scattering plaster dust and ceiling pieces around the toilet and bathroom floor. Throughout the week, small bits of plaster and drops of water fell into the bathroom.

  * The bathtub faucet in the first floor bathroom leaked a continuous stream of very hot water into the tub and had corroded right through the faucet itself. Both the tub and faucet were rusted badly. We came to the determination that this constant hot water leak must have been a contributing factor to the complete shortage of hot water for showers; when ten of us returned from the beach and wanted to clean up, only two of us could do so with even reasonably warm water.

  * While there were three screen doors out onto the deck and one in each of the first floor bedrooms, one screen door in the living room was completely blocked by the location of the television set, while the other two, as well as the one from the bedroom to the back deck, came off in our hands upon our first exit from the house. We set them back on their tracks, but were forced to "repair" them constantly throughout the week in order to use the deck at all.

  * One of the benches to the outdoor picnic table was split through. We did not use it for obvious safety reasons. Having to drag kitchen chairs outside in order to be able to eat as a group outside was a huge inconvenience.

  * The "downstairs apartment" was a disaster. Not only did we feel that it was seriously misrepresented (detailed below), it was musty and buggy. The dehumidifier which was running down there was clearly inadequate, and the decision to run the dehumidifier hose into the downstairs shower stall made the shower dirty and unusable.

  Finally, we felt that there were some serious misrepresentations in both your online description of the house, and in the conversations that you and I had prior to our decision to rent the house for the week:

  * As mentioned, the basement was a disaster. When you and I spoke, I expressed reservations about bedrooms in "a basement." Your response was (which I wrote down at the time to pass on to our friends involved in the rental with us) "It's not so much a basement as a first floor and it also has a separate entrance." Mr. Handler, an underground room with no windows is definitely what I would consider to be a "basement." While furnished comfortably, the downstairs rooms were dark and dank, very musty and extremely buggy. Your response when my husband expressed concerns on the telephone about the mustiness in the basement was to prop open the outside door for a few hours; that resulted in even more bugs, as well as unraked leaves being blown in all over the floor. Having to spray our children with bug spray from head to toe in order for them to go to bed seems more than ridiculous; having to shake all of their clothing, towels and bedding to remove spiders and earwigs before packing to go home is outrageous.

  * Also, never did we imagine that the "separate entrance" was the ONLY entrance to that floor. Even an actual basement can usually be accessed from inside the house. That said, if there were only an external entrance, one might expect lights on the path or at the door to facilitate going downstairs in the dark. We necessarily purchased flashlights for the kids just to help them find their way down there to go to bed.

  * The upstairs "queen bedroom" (which has a full-size mattress on the bed, by the way) had no fourth wall or door. As my husband described it, "it was like sleeping in the hallway." We had no privacy and were unable to let the teen-agers stay up late upstairs in the living room to watch TV or play video games because of the openness of that bedroom to the downstairs level.

  * We were never sure of the appropriate path to "our beach." There were no clarifying directions at the house and your description on the telephone of using the path "on the left" led us either to your neighbor's gate or a different neighbor's lawn. When we followed the path through the open lawn, we found a beach filled with boats--clearly not a private beach that went with the house. There were several docks there as well (which would have been a better alternative for sitting down at the bay than the small beach next to the wetlands, which was extremely buggy), but we determined them all to belong to other houses.

  * Our experience has been that a house intended to "sleep 12" would also provide accommodations to "feed 12." Our intention in renting the house together was to enable us to spend time together and socialize. There was no table or space in the house that would allow us to all eat a meal together. We moved furniture, brought chairs up from the basement and, once again, "jury-rigged" a solution, but it was a huge inconvenience and was a factor, along with the lack of refrigeration, that led to us choosing to eat out much more than we normally would have during our vacation week.

  As you might imagine, Mr. Handler, after wading through three pages of complaints and concerns, we were extremely disappointed in our experience in renting your house for our week on Martha's Vineyard. The fact that you were aware of the problem with the dishwasher and didn't inform us in any way, and that we made you aware of the refrigeration issue on Monday and you never contacted us with a repair plan, or at the very least an apology, is truly unacceptable. I have no idea how much experience you may have in renting out your home, but we have rented homes all over the Cape and Islands, New England, Florida, California and even in Europe over the past 25 years and have never had to deal with anything close to the inadequacies, misrepresentations and lack of information (trash pick-up?) that we endured last week.

  Our original agreement stipulated that you would return the $500 security deposit we paid upon completion of the rental. Considering the fact that we left the house in much better condition than we found it, we would certainly anticipate the refund of that full amount. I would also respectfully request the refund of the $150 housekeeping fee, since there was no evidence of any housekeeping activities occurring prior to our arrival.

  Finally, we strongly believe that you owe us a partial refund of the rent that we paid for the week, in compensation for the groceries we had brought with us (dairy products, luncheon meat, freezer items, fruit and vegetables, leftovers, etc.) that were lost due to inadequate refrigeration and freezer capabilities, the groceries that we had to purchase to replace these items and the innumerable bags of ice that were required to keep anything really cold at all. We also feel that a refund is due to compensate us for the huge inconveniences we experienced, from at least daily trips to Stop & Shop to replace food that had gone bad or to purchase for daily meals rather than being