So I’ll start with the positive: the flat itself was nice, it was similar to the pictures, in a very good location as it was very close to the eiffel tower and was a good size (although I’m unsure how 6 people will comfortably fit, especially since there is only one bathroom).
Now on another note, this booking was one of the downsides of our trip to Paris. Last minute we had to add another night to our trip so we unfortunately decided to book this flat and we did it without reading the T&Cs carefully - big mistake. From the moment we booked, there were constant messages, emails and phone calls from the Merveil team and they required us to send in pictures of our ID and to put in a €1000+ deposit. They were basically harassing me on a daily basis to send this information, it was very annoying and I thought this was weird and a breach of our data privacy. But after reading the reviews, the house rules and checking the credibility of the host with AirBNB, I shortly sent everything required and waited for them to send me the deposit link. Although they were harassing me every day to make the payment, they didn’t send the link in the end so it just showed that it’s really not that serious and not needed with such urgency.
Upon arrival, the entry instructions were very confusing and the video did not really help as it didn’t show where the street side lock was. I tried calling them since they were so available and it seemed like the person I was talking to has never been to the apartment, so very unhelpful. I don’t recommend anyone goes there but if anyone happens to book this air bnb, the lock is basically attached to the rail in front of the bench next to the bus stop. There may be bikes on it, so look for it there.
When we finally managed to get in, there was someone in there (this was after the agreed check-in time of 4PM) and they didn’t have any identification and again, the lady on the phone from their company didn’t know who they were even though they claimed they were from the company. That was the first weird thing to happen.
Second thing was when we finally settled in, the lady called again at around 9 PM (weird) to check if everything was ok. At first I thought it was because we called at 4 PM, but that was 5 hours earlier. It honestly sounded like she was trying to listen to see if we were at the apartment or not. Maybe I’m being paranoid but there were a lot of random silences and no real questions or reason to call, so that really put me off the entire stay, it made all of us feel really unsafe and uncomfortable and we were very glad we only had to stay one day.
To sum it up, there’s other flats near the eiffel tower, you can’t even see it from the flat as the name and pictures imply, so although it is very well located, it’s not worth the hassle. The building is very old, smells of tobacco even though it’s not a smoking apartment and it’s on the ground floor of a busy street so opening the windows isn’t the best. I don’t recommend at all.