We were at Via Emilio Faà di Bruno, 89 interno 22, for 2 days without a functioning toilet. When we arrived and discovered the plumbing problems I was told by someone at Support that "Today is a hard day, all our flats have big leak issues in all the city of Rome, for this reason, we had to run and prioritized them."
The person who let us into the flat told us that this company runs 200 units in Rome. Don't believe the nonsense that this is "Katia's place". Like many Airbnb places, this is a large commercial operation. I have used Airbnb many times, and I have no problems with these sort of places. But this big operation (called Hostmaker) had no problem telling me that we were not a priority, even though we were being charged full price.
I was told at one point that I should put a towel on the floor to deal with the leaking toilet. I pointed out that putting a towel on the floor was not going to make the toilet flush, which was the main problem.
It was more than a day later before someone came to the flat to try to fix the issue. He left without resolving the problem which he said was more serious than they had thought. It was another full day before someone came and fixed the problem.
Unfortunately, the non-functioning toilet was not the only problem. The washing machine did not work, and was very dirty. There was a lot of old laundry soap and fabric softener in the tray. The softener was leaking down the front of the machine and onto the floor. The person who let us into the flat showed us how to use the washer, and turned it on. No water came into the machine, but he said, "Oh, just leave it. It will start in a while." It never did start. So we had to go to a laundromat a couple of blocks away, and pay to do our laundry.
The plastic cover on the wall with the toilet controls had been taken off before we arrived. The Hostmaker guide said "It's OK, you just push these levers." But it is clear that there were already problems with the toilet before we arrived, and the company had not bothered to fix them.
There were very few supplies. There were no tea towels for drying dishes. There was no paper towel. There was no detergent for the dish washer.
The apartment was not cleaned at all. In addition to the filthy condition of the laundry room, there were bits of garbage on the floor. Everything in the bedroom was very dusty. It was scary to look under the bed, which had obviously not been cleaned in years. Several items that had been left behind by previous tenants were mixed in with all the dust. I didn't bother to try to figure out what they were! Considering that we paid a cleaning fee of CAD$86.55, it was a reasonable expectation that we should walk into an apartment which was spotless, and supplied with all the obvious needs for people staying here. The ad says that the flat would be "professionally cleaned" before we arrived. It had not been cleaned, never mind "professionally".
We were very disappointed with our experience at this place. I wrote to the Management saying that we needed to be given a significant refund, since the problems with the place were so significant. After several days, the company offered a refund of only CAD$58 on a place which for 2 days did not provide the basic necessities of a rental unit. I have still not seen that money appear on my credit card.