Beach Access Vacations

WE TOO WERE ROBBED!!! Hiedi Brooks intentionally stole money from renters and multiple homeowners over the past year++++. She rented our home and did not pay us what we were owed. She is a criminal, with no shame. Will also be contacting the Attorney General!!!

WARNING — WARNING RED FLAG WARNING
If you are even remotely ‘considering’ using «BEACH ACCESS VACATIONS» to locate a place for your next Michigan City Vacation, cDON’T!!! Owners, please do not list with them either! vThey have no idea of what a ‘contract’ is, or they just don’t care! So this is your «WARNING»! Continue doing business with BEACH ACCESS VACATIONS at your own risk! In December 2014, we located 2 beautiful rental homes to use for a «Family Reunion», and paid BEACH ACCESS VACATIONS a total of $ 5650.00 for the use of both properties in July, 2015.
One was at 112 Lilac Lane and one at 2000 Lake Shore Drive! (Owners of those properties please take note! Watch who you’re dealing with!) Both properties were excellent for our «Family Reunion» purposes and we met with and signed a ‘contract’ with Ms. Heidi Brooks, of BEACH ACCESS VACATIONS, which was apparently our first mistake. Two «CONTRACTS» were actually ‘signed’, one for each property and ALL rent was paid to Ms. Heidi Brooks in December 2014, totaling $ 5650.00 We were under the assumption that with the contract signed and payment made we had both properties under ‘contract’, 112 Lilac Lane from 25 July to 1 August 2015 and 2000 Lake Shore Drive from 26 July to 1 August 2015. But as the date drew closer, we never heard anything more from BEACH ACCESS VACATIONS, so we called them over and over and also left messages saying we had ‘paid reservations’ and ‘contracts’ for both properties. We never received any response from Ms. Heidi Brooks or BEACH ACCESS VACATIONS. Finally through other means we located Ms. Heidi Brooks. Ms. Heidi Brooks then told us that they could not locate our «contracts» and both properties were now ‘UNAVAILABLE’, even though we had in our possession a signed, valid, and fully paid contract for both, which she fully admitted «was the fault of BEACH ACCESS VACATIONS» but she was sorry and there was nothing that could be done at this time, but if ‘WE’ could find another property she would attempt to book it for us. After some ‘discussion’ Ms. Brooks somehow arranged for us to use 2000 Lake Shore Drive from 25 July to 1 August, 2015 ! (Later though we learned that the owner of that property was apparently ‘deceived and lied to’ by Ms. Brooks in doing so). Also a line on our ‘contract’ from «BEACH ACCESS VACATIONS» for 2000 Lake Shore Drive stated we were allowed to have ‘one dog’ on the premise. But after locating and speaking with the actual owner, we learned that even though it was indeed in the contract from BEACH ACCESS VACATIONS it was not true! Dogs were NOT ALLOWED! So even while we had a valid ‘CONTRACT’ for the 112 Lilac Lane property, it was re-​rented to someone else by BEACH ACCESS VACATIONS and Ms. Heidi Brooks, and we were denied the use of that property for the contracted week. After finally locating and then speaking with the owner of 2000 Lake Shore Drive, we learned that she had not as yet been paid by Ms. Brooks even though we paid for ‘both’ properties in December 2014! Further conversation with the property owner of 2000 Lake Shore Drive found that Ms. Brooks was also lying to her about the name of the persons ‘allegedly’ renting the property and also the length of the rental period which she provided to the owner for the current rental of 2000 Lake Shore Drive. The property owner was told by BEACH ACCESS VACATIONS it had been rented to a family named ‘Nichol’ for three weeks. That was not us and also NOT TRUE!
So after this entire ordeal, in order to reach a final settlement with BEACH ACCESS VACATIONS and Ms. Heidi Brooks, and to recover the money we had pre-​paid to rent 112 Lilac Lane and to cover the extra ‘expenses’ incurred by us while «WE» not «They» were locating another area rental to use for our event we were ‘required’ to sign a note stating that we were satisfied with the change in reservations made in December 2014.
I will leave that decision up to you. Do I sound satisfied? Do you really believe we were ‘satisfied’ with the rental services of BEACH ACCESS VACATIONS? If we were, we would not have been ‘required’ to sign a statement that the repayment amount «satisfies change of reservation dated 30 December 2014 with BEACH ACCESS VACATIONS, LLC» That may preclude me from suing BEACH ACCESS VACATIONS LLC, but not from telling my true story here! And hopefully keeping someone else from such poor treatment. Questions? Feel free to contact me:
A FINAL WARNING! VDO NOT RENT YOUR NEXT VACATION RENTAL PROPERTY FROM ‘BEACH ACCESS VACATIONS’! If you do, you do so at your own risk, have now been warned, twice! This warning has been placed on Trip Advisor and other sites to warn others, NOW ESPECIALLY OWNERS WHO MAY NOT BE AWARE OF THE USES THEIR PROPERTIES HAVE GOTTEN. One more notification left to be made this week, and that’s in Indiana Warning stay! There have been numerous law suits from others who have been mistreated up into the $ 50,000 range! Go away! Run away!

WARNING — Jack K. response is right on! Heidi Brooks has rented our home for the last year and refuses to pay us for the summer of rentals. She will not return phone calls and will not respond to emails. I have spoken to other property owners in the area and she is doing the same thing to them. She is basically stealing our money by not paying us. I would have to say that is the definition of a crook. She has opened up a restaurant in Michigan City called Overboard. My guess is she is using the money from Beach Access Vacations to support her new restaurant.
DO NOT LIST OR RENT HOMES THROUGH BEACH ACCESS VACATIONS!!!
DO NOT SUPPORT HEIDI BROOKS!!! SHE IS A BAD BUSINESS OWNER!!!

We had a bad experience with this compny. Dec. 2014, we reserved a house for July 2015. We paid ½ down and were told to call in June to pay the other half. The first week of June we called and gave them our credit card and were told we would receive an email with checkin instructions. The second week of June the email had not come, so we called and were told they’d send it. The third week of June the email still hadn’t come, so we called again. Then we received an email from the owner of this company threatening that we would lose our half down because we had not paid the final half. After several calls to them, one of the workers said the first week of June they had an employee there that only worked that week. So, they charged our credit card and assured us our rental house was there for us. We received the email with the key code and check in instructions. 24 hours prior to check in, we received an email saying they overbooked the house and offered a full refund plus less than satisfactory reservations at two locations. This was to be a vacation with our family travelling from 4 locations and we wanted to be together. They promised to credit our account on Monday and it didnt happen until Thursday after several calls from us. This business was less than professional with us. We would never recommend this company to anyone.
The house we paid to rent was Sunset Villa East, so the owner of that property needs to know how poorly it is being managed!

We recently stayed at one of the properties in the Beachwalk Community. Beachwalk is a great family friendly place to stay with fairly close access to the beach. I would recommend contracting directly with Beach Walk instead of with Hieidi at Beach Access.
Our experience was not great — started when we couldn’t get into the property at 4PM as the guests prior to our arrival had left late and there was only one woman cleaning the house (3 floors) and she had another job to get to at 4:30. They should have had more people in cleaning so that we could get into the property at the scheduled arrival time. The house was not cleaned to our satisfaction — had them come back twice to clean areas that were missed. The twin beds in the basement both broke when we sat on the mattress (they did come fix the support for the mattresses) — however the quality of all the mattresses at the property was POOR as was the quality of the linens for the bedding. The grill was not cleaned and the drip tray was not changed, there were bugs and webs in the vents. One of the screens was broken on the porch — after a storm came through and totally ripped the screen out they did come back and replace the screen. The kitchen was great — would be nice to have more than one refrigerator as we had 12 people staying in the house. The wine cooler worked ok for storing water and soda. Could never get the temperature in the house to work for all 3 floors — either freezing or hot — did have them come out and look at the AC but never worked for all 3 floors to be comfortable. Garbage can outside was full from previous renter we arrived on a Saturday and trash pickup is on Thursday — asked them to take out some of the trash so there would be room for our garbage. I basically spend the first 3 days of our vacation getting the house cleaned and getting repairs done that should have been part of a standard check list before new guests arrive (like light bulbs out). Also the beach is a bit of a hike from the house — we did rent a golf cart which you can take to the end of the Beachwalk property — then there is a board walk and sand hill to go down before you get to the beach — so a good trek especially with beach chairs, umbrellas etc. The rental for this property was in excess of $ 4000 per week so not a cheap rental — I really expected a higher quality rental experience for the price we paid.

I recently stayed in one of their rentals — Sunset Villa, East and West, or as they also call it East, West and Lower. It was a family reunion and I didn’t make the reservation and didn’t have control over which unit I’d receive. Unfortunately, I stayed in the lower unit. Lower unit = Basement. So forget any sunlight, that I can understand. But really it is an area that is not habitable. I suspect it is not up to code as there are no windows in the bedroom and one door on the far side of the unit. While there I acquainted myself with the various insects that occupy basements in Indiana. The worst of which was the «basement centipede» — look up an image if you want to see it for real. Then there were beetles and some little things that would suck water out of the dish sponge — gross! The fan blew ²⁴⁄₇. We were told there was no way to turn it off. And, the fan is right above the bed. Can’t close the vent entirely or there would be a loud whistle. When I arrived there were no towels. The bed had hideously worn polyester bedding with no blanket. We froze that first night until we realized we could turn on the heat function (it was july). When we found some bedding and towels in a dark closet (classy!) was disappointed to find they had been washed in scented detergent and fabric softener. Hotels know better than to wash this way as so many people are sensitive to fragrance. Everything was worn and yuck. The pillows must have been ten years old, stained, worn down. I did complain about this to management. At first they sent a voicemail back saying «sorry, we don’t have any more». But later they did come by with some new but super cheap offerings from the local Meijer store. The air quality was poor, I think it was dust. My daughter’s mild asthma came back with coughing during the night. My husband and I had dry and itchy eyes. The bed has never heard of pocket coils and every movement was felt all over the bed. And to top it off, the price. The whole rental was $ 5992/​week. So this wasn’t some cheap rental. Anyways, just wanted to review to caution anyone who is thinking of renting out this unit. I should say that the rest of the rental is much nicer than this unit. Would have been very helpful if management would have made this clear that one of the units was indeed a basement with everything you would expect of a basement and was one star at best. The rest of the units were aesthetically nicer, though still suffered the lack of quality bedding and towels. And oddly, window coverings. So the units with the most sun had no coverings at all exposing the guests to bright morning sunshine. the hot tub didn’t work. The units lacked sofas and tables to put things on. My impression overall is this must be a place that is for sale and only rented out with the cheapest of furnishings to pass the time until a sale comes through. One good thing about the lower unit was that the internet connection was good down there. It was crappy further up in the unit. The only reason I’m giving it two stars were that the units above ground were aesthetically nicer.