We were booked for 3 days but instead left in under 6 hours and got the full refund. Three things because of which I don’t recommend:
1. Paola remained inside the apartment for 1.5 hours past checkin along with her repair technician trying to fix the boiler. There was no apology, excuse, explanation. It was as if she and the technician being inside the apartment while we were also there was normal. In fact she asked us to put our bags down and go out, see the town and come back in an hour. The kids were really tired and wanted to rest. Still we accommodated her request and came back around 130pm when she was finally gone (FYI: checkin time was 12pm).
2. She yelled at us for asking if the bed sheets had been replaced. The particular tone was that “maybe it was normal to have dirty bed sheets where you people came from but not here.”
3. The heating did not work and she refused to acknowledge the problem. For reference, it was January 7th. It was 59F outside during the day and the same inside. The forecast for the night was 33F and her recommendation for the kids was to put more clothes on them. We repacked our bags and left at 6pm when it started to get chilly and filed for refund. She insisted that the city of Rome levies hefty fines for going above 17C. This is patently false as confirmed by our other hosts. She also refuses to put this city requirement in the listing which tells you all you need to know about its accuracy. The first two problems could have been ignored but this last one crossed our threshold.
It helped that we communicated through Airbnb’s messaging service. Throughout the 4.5 hours that we stayed there, she would frequently message on WhatsApp which is not recommended with this host.