First of all: THIS IS AN AGENCY, not a private owner renting his/her place. You will receive a BUNCH of automatic responses from an “Alice” who seems to be a robot. Every time you call their number, you have a different person on the phone, to whom you have to describe the issues ALL OVER AGAIN.
Let me explain the series of mistakes they made from the beginning:
1. a few days before my arrival, I received a message from this “Alicia” (I later found out that it was an automated message). That message told me to pick the keys up from a laundry mat. They said the code was B1823. I took a taxi from the airport and I made the poor driver wait (IN THE MIDDLE OF A NARROW STREET!), telling him that it would take just a few seconds to pick the keys up. The thing is that the key box in the laundry mat had a key pad to enter the code, WITH NO LETTER (ONLY NUMBERS!!!). How on Earth was I supposed to enter the “B” in B1823 is there was no letters! I had no data/roaming on my foreign phone, so I had no way to call the “owner” (agency). The people at the restaurant next to laundry mat were so kind that they gave me access to their wifi. I called the “owner” 10 times (I have screenshots of that), and sent lots of messages. She took forever to reply and 1) she said that the number on the posting was wrong: that I needed to call another number and 2) that they had made a mistake, indeed: the code for the key box was a long series of digits (no letters). In the meantime, while I was waiting for this “Alicia” to reply, the taxi driver was still waiting in the middle of the street, with all my 3 suitcases… I had to pay him and let him go because “Alicia” was not replying fast enough and was not even picking up the calls. I stayed in the restaurant until this “Alicia” gave me the correct password for the laundry mat.
2. I had to walk 7 blocks from the laundry mat to the apartment, with my THREE SUITCASES! Warning: this posting has ZERO information regarding two facts that could influence your decision to rent or not this apartment: 1) the place they ask you to pick up the key from is 7 blocks from the actual apartment (so take this into account if you are traveling with older people, people with disabilities or with lots of suitcases 2) they don’t tell you that the apartment is ON A FIFTH FLOOR WITH NO ELEVATOR until you paid (again, take this into account if you are traveling with older people, people with disabilities or with lots of suitcases).
3. I traveled all around the world, to developed and less developed countries/places. It is the very first time I go to an apartment in a modern and cosmopolitan city as Paris and there is ABSOLUTELY NO INFORMATION ABOUT THE WIFI!!! In every place I’ve been, the owner usually greets you personally; if they are not there to greet you they usually leave the wifi network’s name and the password on the table or any very visible place. THE WIFI INFORMATION WAS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND!!!! I was completely in-communicated and if it wasn’t because of the very nice and generous neighbors of the fifth floor, I would have been completely isolated and with no access to the internet during my whole stay!!!!!!!
4. Every time I called/messaged the agency to tell them that the wifi was not working, I had a different person on the phone or an automatic message. They proceeded to give me a series of ALL WRONG possible solutions to the wifi problem: a) they said the routers (la Free box) would have a QR code to be scanned to have access to the internet. I took videos of every single side of the boxes and there was no QR code to be found. b) they then said that there would be a network called “QR à flasher”. There was not such a network (I had to take screenshots to prove it). c) then they said, again, that there should be a QR code to be scanned. THEY WANTED ME TO PLAY THE IT PERSON for them and find a solution for them?? They didn’t even greet me at the apartment; they made me pick up the keys at another location, with a wrong password. d) they then said they would try to get back in touch with the owner to find out about the wifi. Until the day I LEFT, THERE WAS STILL NO WIFI!!! I was still using the neighbor’s unstable wifi.
5. On top of that, at the end of the stay, they asked me to walk again the 7 blocks to leave the keys at the laundry mat. If they had been welcoming and polite from the beginning, I wouldn’t have minded doing it. However, given that it was the worst experience I’ve ever had on AirBnb, I called them and I told them that heck no I wasn’t walking the 7 blocks with my luggage. I left the keys inside and I locked the door.
6. The lavabo was clogged from the moment I arrived to the moment I left.
I must point out that after a few hours of not having wifi (I NEEDED THE WIFI TO BE IN TOUCH WITH PEOPLE I HAD TO MEET IN PARIS!!! OTHERWISE I WOULD HAVE BEEN TOTALLY ISOLATED) I asked them to just reimburse me if they were not going to fulfill the minimum conditions on the posting (reliable wifi). I preferred to pay a hotel instead. They said they could proposed to reimburse me 30 euros. WTF???
This has been the worst experience on airbnb ever. Absolutely unwelcoming. Absolutely impersonal. Absolutely incompetent. Absolutely inefficient. Absolute rude. I