Drakes Island Rentals

"Can’t give zero stars - Unprofessional and awful experience dealing with this owner. A story almost too laughable to tell…the below doesn’t even have all the details! She doesn’t respond to emails for weeks, refuses to take phone calls when asked to numerous times, requires SSN and copies of drivers licenses, and other documents that shouldn’t be needed. After being fully paid , We asked her about a review online about heavy smoke odor, if it was true… she sent us a refund check back in the mail 2 weeks before our stay with no explanation. Replied to numerous emails many days later saying she can’t control smoke from fire pits and grills, just like she can’t control the weather…. What?! Then when we questioned her as to why she would ruin a families end of summer vacation like this, she asked to have the check mailed back and added additional stipulations to the pet agreement that weren’t in the lease agreement signed. This place is NOT pet friendly as she won’t allow your dog to even go to the bathroom on property, and there are many requirements. Should not say pet friendly on her website. I emailed her back noting she termed our lease by sending a refund and left us no choice but to book elsewhere quickly and never heard from her again, which shows no remorse. Would highly suggest staying elsewhere and dealing with more professional people."

"Good, Bad & Ugly...An Honest Review Recently rented unit 1 at 487 Drakes Island Road for a one week stay and based on our experience I feel it warrants an honest review for those that may be thinking of staying at this property. Here is the good, bad & ugly. The Good: The unit could not be in a better location for a property that is not actually on the beach. Less than 100 yards to the sand makes it easy to go back and forth from the house to the beach. Drakes Island is a great spot. The property is well maintained and landscaped. The interior of the unit is nicely laid out and decorated. Main floor has plenty of room to spread out, the two bedrooms provide enough room to be very usable for multiple people. The water pressure in the showers is the best you will find anywhere (this is a major plus) The beach area is nice and people are very friendly in the area. The Bad: (well, maybe not "Bad' but not great) Much of the furniture in the unit is the low quality type you put together from a box. This is especially true of the bedroom furniture. The bunk beds in the upper bedroom are a very inexpensive brand that have a lot of movement to them and do not appear to be strong enough to support a child older than 5 or 6. The bed in the main bedroom on the 1st floor is only a full-size. While this is not the end of the world it would be nice to have at least a queen sized bed for the adults to use. The rental is listed as having use of laundry but please note they only allow access to the laundry on Friday and Saturday before check out. This timeframe is all but useless when you are on vacation as most folks would like to do laundry mid-week and not on the day they are checking out. The rental requires payment of a cleaning fee. While the unit was "clean" it is obvious that the unit has not had a good cleaning in some time. My guess is the unit is vacuumed and wiped down between rentals but it could really stand a good deep cleaning. Much of the trim has dust, the doors have dirt fingerprints on them and the carpets have multiple stains. A good pre-season deep cleaning should be done. The wifi is ok if only one person is using it otherwise it is a very weak signal. The stack of magazines on the coffee table are from 2005 which may be an indication that the unit could stand a good going through by the owners. The Ugly: THE UNIT REEKS OF CIGARETTE SMOKE! Nothing in this world is worse than a house that is caked in stale cigarette smoke if you are not a smoker. So while the agreement states this is a non-smoking unit it appears this is not the case for the owners unit that connects to this unit. Someone is a HEAVY smoker in this building. Upon entering the unit the smell smacks you in the face immediately. Within a few minutes of checking in we called the owner (Bonnie) to inform her of the issue. Bonnie let us know she would be happy to drop off some spray. While I can't say if anyone ever smoked in the unit the same cannot be said for the other unit behind. There are two doors that connect the rental unit to the owners unit and this is where the smoke comes in from as they are not sealed. I smelled around the door and it was obviously the source. The adjoining door for the upstairs bedroom is the worst. The upstairs bedroom is all but unusable unless you want to smell like an ashtray for your entire stay. I am positive this was not the first time the owners had this complaint. We immediately got online to see if we could find another place to stay but as it was the summer season we could not find any availability. With no option but to stay or go home we decided to go to the hardware store to get plastic and tape to seal up the doors. We spent $25 on supplies out of our own pocket. We stuffed the openings between the doors and frame with paper towels, covered the door with lysol spray, taped over all of the openings and then sealed the entire door frames with sheets of plastic which helped but was not perfect. Due to the issue with the cigarette smell we would not rent the unit again."

"For two years now, our family has tried multiple times to contact this agency to rent on the island. I've left emails, and voicemails with dates, building preferences, # of occupants, etc. and I have not gotten a single response. Not once. We vacation in Maine every year, and every year, we end up giving our business to someone else because we can't seem to talk to the one person who rents out places on Drakes. It's so frustrating, especially when homeowners on HomeAway and VRBO and AirBNB respond so quickly. I'm almost convinced the business is a sham and am looking into reporting them to the BBB."

"Love Bellemer Cottage.. Steps from the beach.."