To start out, I have been using Airbnb for 10 years now and have never had as many issues with a listing. I have also been to Paris a number of times and stayed at Airbnb's throughout the city so I know there are some quirks to Paris apartments, but the issues we had ultimately detracted from our stay in Paris so I wanted to write this review so that people know what they are getting into. We booked this trip to celebrate my sister's birthday so decided to splurge with a more luxury apartment for our stay, especially since it was our first time traveling in 20 months.
Pros - the apartment is absolutely gorgeous and in a perfect central location. It looks exactly as described/pictured and was very well stocked (except for towels but I will get to that later). We were there in early November and the heat wasn’t working (which I detail below), so couldn't take much advantage of the outdoor space but I am sure it nicer weather or it wasn’t so cold in the apartment it would be amazing to sit out there.
Cons:
1) Communication - as other reviews said communication could be better. The apartment is managed separately, so I was given the French number for the property manager to call to confirm check in time/details but never heard back. I had to message the owner again to confirm that I could text the property manager - once I texted her she was very responsive but it was a little anxiety inducing not to have any details until the day before.
2) Heat!! As I said earlier, we were there for 4 days in the beginning of November so it was fairly cold the entire time and even got down to the 38 F at night. When we checked in it was sunny, so it wasn't until we came back from dinner that we realized there was NO HEAT in the apartment. Instead they had a space heater in each of the rooms and two to "heat" the upstairs. When I texted the property manager the next morning to ask for directions she said that the heat was at the building's discretion to turn on and all we had to heat the apartment was the space heaters. While the space heaters in the bedrooms did a good job of keeping us warm throughout the night, they were absolutely not adequate to heat the upstairs, and the bathrooms had no heat at all. I continued to message both the property manager and apartment owner (with no response) and two days into our stay we received a third space heater to help with the upstairs. So instead of enjoying our time outside on the patio or using the beautiful bathtub, we were huddled in our warmest clothes under blankets that we had pulled from the bedrooms.
3) Other issues included a very limited supply of towels - they only provided two towels per person staying there (a large one and a small one that were not in great condition). Since the heat wasn’t working we couldn’t dry them on the towel racks, and when we tried to wash and dry them 1 day in we discovered that the dryer wasn’t working as well. I kept asking for more towels so we didn’t have to keep using the damp dirty towels and was finally provided more on our last day (they came a bit damp which was just icing on the cake). Lastly, a piece of the floor was broken so there was a hole in the middle of one of the bedrooms for the entirely of our stay.