KAPA‘A — Peering inside Suite 211 at the East Kaua‘i Professional Building in Kapa‘a, there is nothing to see except shiny, hardwood floors and dark shadows cast upon the walls. Anini Aloha Vacation Rentals & Management — a division of
KAPA‘A — Peering inside Suite 211 at the East Kaua‘i Professional Building in Kapa‘a, there is nothing to see except shiny, hardwood floors and dark shadows cast upon the walls.
Anini Aloha Vacation Rentals & Management — a division of Arizona-based business Solcrest Properties, LLC — has apparently departed. The Eastside office sits abandoned, phone numbers are disconnected and the Web site transformed almost overnight.
Owners Frank and Teri Klenner have left behind angry clients who claim the business owes them a bundle of money. Some visitors expecting to stay at a place they booked through Anini Aloha are arriving on island with nowhere to go and money gone from their accounts.
“It looks like they’ve skipped town, not returning phone calls or anything else,” said Mary Paterson, owner of Custom Care Company, who represents someone that rented their vacation home through Anini Aloha.
The agency owes her some $16,000 in unpaid rent, which she has been trying to collect since April 27, she said.
Paterson aggressively began to contact to the company — which was still operating in Kapa‘a at the time, reportedly without a principal broker — by May 5 to follow up on the missed payments.
After a round of unresponsive e-mails and phone calls, she said she was startled to find that when she stopped by the office June 5, Anini Aloha had vacated the premises.
Meredith Murphy, former principal broker of Anini Aloha, said she was just as shocked to learn “they dug out.”
“I’m not happy at all with the way they’ve conducted business,” she said in an interview Sunday.
Murphy had worked for Anini Aloha for approximately three years. She was employed there before the Klenners bought the company two years ago. She recently left because they owed her some $8,500.
“They buffaloed the system,” Murphy said.
They eventually became quite difficult to communicate with, she added, and were less responsive over time, adding that she was never privy to the company’s financial transactions.
“The system has a problem if they can allow this to happen,” Murphy said. “It’s a business, but the customer is not protected.”
Repeated attempts to reach Frank and Teri Klenner for comment were unsuccessful by press time.
Another person affected by the company’s apparent departure was visitor Erik Hanson, who booked a place to stay through Anini Aloha in September and paid his dues by March.
On June 18, about an hour before his flight was scheduled to depart from the Mainland, he received a call from the owner of the cottage he had rented for the first week of his stay.
Hanson was told by the owner that Anini Aloha had “not paid him in months” and that the company had “packed up and left the island.”
The owner had rented the cottage out to someone else in the meantime and reportedly had not been given Hanson’s contact information until the day before he was to arrive.
“We did not know what to think. Was he scamming us? Was it some kind of falling out between them and we were getting the short end of the stick?” Hanson said in an e-mail Thursday. “And we had to get on a plane in a few minutes and be on it during all of the business hours in Hawai‘i.”
Hanson was able to make other last-minute arrangements.
“We have left numerous messages for Frank at Solcrest, but none of our phone calls have been returned,” Hanson said, adding that the company owes him $2,100. “Needless to say, what we really want returned is our money.”
Ric Adkins, owner of two rental properties on Anini Beach, was also allegedly deceived by Anini Aloha, though he had his suspicions after the new owners took over the company and his checks began trickling in several weeks after they were due.
Not only were rent payments delayed or nonexistent, he said his housekeeper and gardener had not been paid in months.
Adkins confirmed that the agency still owes him money, though it apparently has clients booked for him until June 2010. The trouble is, he has no way to contact the visitors, as Aloha Anini did not provide contact information for anyone after July.
“They refused to give contact information for visitors, only dates,” he said Sunday.
Adkins has decided to let visitors stay regardless of the fact that the management company never transferred payments to him. He said he would like to begin renting again, but has no way to contact guests and inform them of the situation.
Tom Lacour, another vacation rental owner, also experienced problems acquiring visitor contact information from Anini Aloha.
He has vacationers arriving the July 4 weekend and had to track them down in a round-about fashion after receiving only their name.
“Luckily they had an unusual name,” he said, adding that he did an online search and found four individuals with the same name and either called or mailed letters to them, covering four different states.
The correct people responded to one of his letters and after Lacour explained the situation, he agreed to only charge them a minimum fee for their stay unless they were able to receive a refund from Anini Aloha.
“I just can’t believe they’d close the door and run off like that,” Lacour said Sunday. “The visitors going to their rental places and finding out they’ve been locked out; it’s just terrible.”
“I want anybody who is going to be affected or is affected to know what’s going on,” Adkins said. “I’m under the impression they are still managing some properties on Kaua‘i and those homeowners may be unaware.”
Paterson has also been on a mission to enlighten others about the situation, as it was only a few days ago the agency was still operating via its Web site.
“This is just really appalling that they’re doing this,” she said, adding that she also notified Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act in Honolulu, the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, the HI Real Estate Commission and the Kaua‘i Board of Realtors.
KBR said in an e-mail Thursday that all calls are being referred to DCCA. The department could not be reached for comment over the weekend.
“KBR has the ability to handle ethics complaints; however, when it comes to consumer harm, our policy is to refer them to the DCCA,” Karen Agudong, KBR president, said.
The Scottsdale business was formally the Florida-based Klenner Group, Inc., sources said.
“This is a small community; we all need to network here,” Paterson said, hoping that those affected will join together and that justice will be found.
• Coco Zickos, business and environmental writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 251) or czickos@kauaipubco.com
