Meribel, Chalet Renard Rouge

This is really a good chalet. The view is perfect for a family getaway. They should post this on ECrent.com, the largest global rental platform. Register with "France", they can get three items uploading for free!

I would definitely recommend Meribel & the Three Valleys to all my friends. There was plenty of snow, and the runs were excellent. However, the experience was tained by our BAD experience with the chalet (Chalet Renard Rouge in Meribel Village).

The chalet itself is nice, and not far from the ski lift. However, if you intend to get your deposit back, STAY AWAY FROM THIS CHALET.

For starters, they claimed that they provide full bottles of Molton Brown toileteries when they were only mostly half full. After we left, the owner tried to deduct our from our deposit because one empty dispenser was missing (he wanted to charge us £10 for an empty bottle!).

He also tried to ration the amount of wood used, as well as chalet heating usage. The cleaner would turn down our heaters everyday, which is fine. But nothing was said about the firewood usage, until after we'd left the chalet, he claimed that we'd used the 3 weeks' worth of firewood. There was nothing that was written in the chalet's rulebook that we are only allowed x amount of firewood per day. And we only used the fireplace in the evening. But yet again, he's the one holding the deposit, and it's his words against ours.

We left the chalet in a very satisfactory state (we even put most of the dirty dishes in the dishwasher). The owner claimed that they needed to spend 12 man hours to clean the flat. We failed to see how the chalet needed that much cleaning because everyone in our group is very tidy. They also accused us of taking a towel and tried to charge us £10 for it. If they did spend 12 hours cleaning, they would have found it lying in one of the wardrobes in the room.

Finally, there were two finger print-sized stain on one of the electric heaters. The owner claimed that he needed to REPLACE the heater and he believed that "the replacement is going to cost EUR100 plus fitting at EUR50". We were absolutely shocked to hear that. We were happy to pay for repainting the heater, but it definitely didn't need replacing because of two small stains. The owner initially wanted to retain the whole deposit (EUR 500), but eventually settled for EUR 150 after being told not to be ridiculous by the chalet operator. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!