Alex and his brother have been on vacation this week, renting a condo at the beach. Sounds fun and relaxing. Or it would be, if it weren’t for the construction workers re-siding the condo building. They’re tossing debris everywhere, including near cars, leaving tools and construction materials around off hours, and hammering at 8 A.M. It’s making these vacationers cranky, and the real estate agency that rented them the condo said that they would contact the owners, but hasn’t contacted them. The vacation is nearly over. What should they do?

I’m in a situation where I’m unsure how to proceed. I rented a condo with my brother in [redacted] for the week of June 23 to 30 through [redacted] realty, and when we arrived, the entire building was under construction for siding replacement.

The building is L-shaped and for Saturday and Sunday they were working on re-siding the other half of the building so the interruption was minimal other than our designated parking space being filled with construction materials.

But starting Monday very early morning they have been working near us and we have been woken up every morning by hammering since in the 8:00 hour, which really stinks for our one vacation a year and only opportunity to sleep in.

The conditions of the property otherwise have been pretty terrible – construction debris everywhere including in the pool, paths and exits blocked by tools and workers. We keep moving our car further and further from the building only to find near misses of siding and debris being thrown down from the second floor near the car. There are even exposed live electrical wires all over, since they took all the exterior lights off the building to do the siding. It is really not even a safe environment to be in at all. Thankfully we don’t have children with us.

We called the realtor we rented from ([redacted]) on Monday and she said she would contact the owners and get back to us. We have left 3 more messages with her since and I’ve even tried to call the owners of the condo directly. We stopped by the realty office too. No response whatsoever in 70 hours and counting. Had this been dealt with days ago, we might have salvaged a decent vacation out of it elsewhere had the realtor moved us or refunded our money so we could go to a hotel. But at this point, we are nearing the end of the vacation. I’m not sure what recourse we have at this point other than court?

We have documented everything at least and I have plenty of pictures of the conditions and audio of the noise on my phone.

Suggestions?

A chargeback or stopping payment on the check would be an option if they didn’t pay for the trip far in advance. It’s also possible that the owner is unreachable, even by the realtor, but in that case the realtor should let the brothers know that and offer them something for their trouble.

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.