Mandy's Minute

UPDATE 8-15-2010 – David, the owner of Akamai Mother’s rentals contacted me after reading this blog entry.  He apologized, offered a refund, and also offered an explanation about why he was rushed the day he dropped off the rental items.  He had a death in the family the day when we arrived, which I was able to verify through an independent source.   I was so sorry to hear about that, and certainly that would explain the rushed feeling we got.  I wish he would have said something at the time but he probably did not want to burden us with terrible news right as we were starting our vacation.  I commend David for honoring his customers enough to deliver his orders even at such a tragic time.  Although the items were not what I would consider clean, under the circumstances, it could of been an oversight and if you do use Akamai Mother’s hopefully you will have a better experience than we did.  I declined the refund because as I said in the entry, overall it was a good experience and it was a better value compared to the other rental companies.

4/17/2010 – Since all the airlines are charging for how much you can bring, we decided we would fore-go taking much baby gear and decided on renting it while in Maui.  I did some research and there are several places that rent baby gear on Maui such as www.easytravelhi.com, www.wildwheelwentals, and www.nanaenterprises.com but I settled on www.akamaimothers.com  for a couple of reasons.  One, they are the least expensive and two, I really liked their story.  Moving from the mainland to Hawaii, which seemed almost on a whim and started a pretty successful business renting baby gear.  Kudos to them.  I made my reservation online and got a confirmation within 24 hours from the owner David.  For the week I reserved, a pack of 15 indoor toddler toys, stroller, baby monitor and high chair – for total of $75. 

Within an hour of arrival, our items were delivered by the owner David.  He rushed in dropped the items off, showed my husband how to do the stroller and ran out.  The impression I got, is that he is very over worked.  I know he does the deliveries himself, in addtion to all the customer service but being pulled in many different directions, can leave the customer feeling less valuable.  Anyways, once the items arrived, I had mixed feelings on my decision.  I was told the baby gear and toddler toys are cleaned prior to going out for the next rental but I beg to differ.  One look at the toys (and just feeling the mesh bag they came it), I knew I had to go to the store and buy cleaning wipes, there was food and grime on most, if not all the toys.  They also included a plush toy, which I think is crazy, because you can’t clean it properly.  If it was mine, it would go into the wash but since it wasn’t it went on top of the refrigerator for the week.   We went to Safeway to get some wipes and while there, my mother kept saying, “something stinks” and “something smells dirty.”  Well, we found out what “stunk” and what was “dirty”… it was us!  The stroller handle smelled so bad that not only could you smell it but our hands reeked too.  GROSS!  Needless to say, we wiped that sucker down too.  Nothing is more disgusting when items are supposed to be “clean” and when you wipe them down with cleaning wipes, the wipes turn black.  That my friend is not clean! 

Once the items were disinfected and clean, my son had a blast with them and the stroller and high chair did their job.  Overall it was a good experience but I would suggest to Akamai Mothers that they might want to consider hiring another hand to help David out and clean the baby rental gear before it goes out.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 17th, 2010 at 10:43 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.