Seminyak holiday villa rental with private pool, internet access, balcony/terrace and air con

Dear Tanya, Thank you for your time to write this review. We find it unfair and biased with a slight taste of vengeance about your spoiled holidays for which our villa or ourselves are not responsible. We regret that prior to your arrival you already had concerns about security matters after that awful event occurred in another property, which had nothing to do with ours. However, and for your comfort, we offered you at that time the opportunity to discuss ways to make you feel safer if ever you were not feeling secured enough after you had checked in. Since nothing came up for more than a week after you checked in, we naturally believed that everything was all right, until we received this e-mail from you stating that somebody tried to break in the villa and that you were consequently checking out. So please let us address the issues you pointed out. 1. A knife was found? Yes. This knife belongs to the villa and it is the smallest knife among all the other knives provided in the cutlery of the villa (blade: 6.5 cm long x 1cm width…the one for the garlic…) Our security guard confirmed before you checked out that he has used that knife to cut loose some debris in the roof water gutter, which was clocked due to the strong rain and winds the night before. He was totally sorry that he forgot to put the knife back on the shelf. 2. The open window? We used to live in this house for many years, and the only reason why such things can happen it is because it was actually not properly closed in the first place. Otherwise, logically, if there were a thief, it would have been so much easier for him to break the glass. Or he would at least have used his own set of tools, instead of trying to sneak in with the smallest knife ever. 3. The door lock upstairs kept breaking? We had many other guests staying with us before and no one has reported this issue. We are always more than happy to help or to fix anything that is going wrong in the house, if we are made aware of it. Interestingly, you hastily reported the issues with Internet but you never reported a problem with a door lock. It looks pretty awkward to us for people who are so over-concerned about security. And even if there was a problem, you only mentioned it when you were checking out so how could we even fix it for you? We are currently having other guests now, and the door lock just seems fine. 4. Villa quite isolated? We are in Umalas, a very upmarket residential area 15 minutes away from Seminyak. We are 40 meters away from the main road. There are at least 15 cafes, restaurants and shops nearby. There are 5 other villas in our lane (ours is the 2nd), and there is a minimum of 10 villas in the lanes behind and in front of us. Indeed, sometimes, it is hard to get a random taxi driver to find the location of the villa even though you had given them the exact address…unfortunately some don’t make the effort or some just don’t understand a foreign accent and just pretend… This is why we provide a few taxi numbers who know the house. Once again we feel sorry for what you felt, but we can’t accept such a biased review. For our future guests, please note: In this particular case, there was nothing missing either from the guests or the villa belongings. Not a penny was stolen, and we consider neither the knife nor the open window as an evidence of breaking in. If somebody attempted to do so they wouldn’t have bothered going through so much trouble trying to unlock a window when they can just break the glass and reach for the lock. These guests were already super stressed before they even arrive in Bali, because they saw some reports on the Australian news about an assault on an Australian girl in some other villa. We are actually one of the only villas in our range of budget to offer a security guard at night and we even offered to strengthen the security if they felt uncomfortable. Before reporting the issues mentioned above the guests rushed out and booked another hotel in Seminyak immediately. This is where we found out that we were not given a chance to make things better even though we actually could. As villa owners, we always do whatever is necessary to prevent any inconvenience during our guests stay. But, we can’t do much if our guests don’t report the possible issues to us. We can’t be held responsible for these guests’ nervous breakdown that was already dormant before they set their feet in Bali or in our property. No refund was given to the guests, which might explain a bit of resentment. Kind regards, Paulina and Chris