I was looking to rent a house on the ocean for my mother's surprise 50th birthday. My mother absolutely loves the ocean so I started to look at different rental companies in Maine.

Upon looking through the Hearts of Maine website, I found the perfect house! I inquired about the availability of this house for the weekend of my mother's birthday. The response was the cost was 250 a night. On the website the occupancy states 10. That was perfect, we had 10 people who were going to be staying at the house. When I asked about the extra guest fees (on the website it has the 9th and 10th people are an extra $100), it took 5 days for them to get back to me. The response was that the 250/night was only for 6 people and that it would be an extra 100 dollars for the other four. This rental property rents for 1500/week at this time of year and they wanted me to pay 77% of this cost for just the weekend. My email back to the company stated "Hello Sue,After discussing the rental with my family, we are all in agreement that the price is not what is listed on the website. The website does not specify that it only applies if it is rented for the week. We would be paying 77% of the cost for one week for only 3 nights. Where this rental would be extremely OFF SEASON, we would assume that the price would go down, not up. The information should be consistent between both the owner and Hearts of Maine. You may want to consider changing the information on your website, it is very misleading and in turn will lead to poor customer satisfaction.Thank you for your time." The response from the President of the company, Gregory Burr was "Shame on you for trying to get something for nothing. This caliber of house is extremely reasonable at $100.00 per person for 10 people for the weekend. It is more expansive to run this house in the winter time that it is in the summer because of heating and plowing costs.

We do not list nightly rates on our web-site so this has nothing to do with being consistent with the web-site. It is up to the owner's discretion on what nightly rate they set for their rental's. We find you completely RUDE and SHAMELESS for trying to have your group stay at this house for next to nothing and therefore we are blacklisting you for our rentals in the future and we will be sending your name out to the other rental companies as they do for us warning them about you. Please do not ever try to rent from us again as we find you have low moral character.

Gregory Burr
Owner/President - Hearts of Maine

I in no way was rude or shameless regarding this rental property. I was simply inquiring about the price and the reasoning behind the price that they gave me since on the website the information says the price is for 8 people. In the initial email from Sue Burr, she did not list a limit to the people when she gave me the price. The price suddenly jumped from 750 plus tax for the 3 nights to 1150 plus tax for the same time.

This company has poor customer service and relations as is demonstrated in their email to me. I would not recommend doing business with this company. Hearts of Maine...not an appropriate name for a company that acts like they do.

I am planning my third vacation using Hearts of Maine. I have never received anything but exceptional service from them. They have been prompt in answering all of my questions and are always friendly and more than happy to help. We have been so happy with the houses we have stayed in so far and the service we received, we will continue to use Hearts of Maine for planning our future trips. I would recommend them to anybody planning a trip.