We stayed for 2 nights at her location. The owners were responsive during the booking phase on Airbnb.
However everything went downhill from there. From our understanding, we were in contact with the appointed agent for the apartment when checking in.
To begin, the agent refused to inform us where to collect the key from until we arrive at the apartment (e.g. we were 10 mins away, she told us to call back). This was after she was supposed to receive us on site. Upon reaching, there was no where to stop the car outside the building. Sure there was roadside parking, but the agent made it seem like it was certain you'd get a lot, which certainly wasn't the case at the time that we arrived.
The instructions over the phone were “Find the letter box, see around you for bamboo trees, walk along the lighted path way and you’ll find two lock boxes.” The issue here is that the bamboo trees are everywhere and there were no boxes at the end of the lighted area. It took a good 10mins before we found the key. This is the key to the apartment and not to open the gate to the carpark, which leaves your car still awkwardly by the road. So you’ll have to go up to the apartment to collect the keys to the carpark then come back down again to drive the car in. The carpark key is located on top of the microwave oven and guess what? The microwave oven is hidden in one of the many cupboards in the kitchen. You’ll have to open all the cupboards to find the key. This shows how not user friendly the checking in procedure is.
After which, we were told which parking lot to take but was not told which level the parking lot is. Adding salt to injury, the parking lots numbers are not in sequence and the car park was badly lit. It took another 10 mins going through different levels of car park before we could find the lot. (The message from the host only came through after we'd sorted all of these out). The entire check in procedure took us about 30mins before we were settled in the apartment.
Now to the apartment, the apartment itself is spacious and the layout was exactly like in the pictures. However, everything else was in bad shape. The floor was sandy and we had to vacuum the entire apartment before settling in. The kitchen amenities were all super dirty and we had to go through layers of dirt before deciding not to use the water boiler. The cutleries were with dust too. The tissue provided were all yellow from exposing to water and this shows the nonchalance of the agent. We took picture evidences for everything.
The apartment is located at level 2 and everyone coming into the apartment can look into the living room and bedroom unless the curtains are drawn, ok for winter but think twice in summer. Anyone malicious could also easily climb into the apartment as the external metal gate can’t be locked.
The nearest mart is a petrol station and the location is not near to any amenities.
The checking out was also a nightmare as we had to leave the key back in the apartment. However we need the key to activate the lift to the carpark. This meant that we had to bring everything onto the car, drive the car a distance away from the apartment, walked back to the apartment, head up to the apartment but have someone hold on to the lift door, return the key into the apartment, then rush into the lift before it closes. You would better be mission impossible trained to execute each step in precision just to check out.
We would highly recommend to save yourself all these trouble by not paying and booking for this apartment. We stayed in Melbourne for three weeks in different apartments. This was by far the worst of all our Airbnb experiences ever. There’s no saving grace other than being near to Albert Park