THE FULL STORY IS AT THE BOTTOM. Here are just the positives and negatives.
Positives:
- Great communication, quick response times from Alessandro.
- Alessandro has a very nice personality, he just made a mistake.
- Location is walking distance (Not a 10 minute walk, but you can walk an hour away and see every major tourist attraction in Roma)
Negatives:
- One room had a broken bed and a broken toilet (the toilet broke in the other room on the last day too). The other room had no fridge and the shower didnt work. So I had to go to his room to use the toilet (except the last night) and he had to come to my room to use the shower. The sink also had no hot water, only cold water, and both sinks had extremely low water pressure.
- Both rooms had tea bags and a coffee cup, but no working espresso machine, and no microwaves or anything to cook with.
- I still got charged extra behind the scenes, not through the Air BnB application.
- The rooms were extremely small.
- The bathrooms were the smallest bathrooms I’ve ever seen in my life.
- I payed for 5 days, yet I was given only one towel for the shower.
- The shower that worked gets clogged when you use it.
- The silverware and plates were dirty and dusty.
THE FULL STORY:
So this whole story is kind of weird. The BnB was listed at a completely different location, for a completely different price than he wanted. It was listed near Fiumicino for $52 a night. The advertisement said that it had 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and 5 beds for $52 a night. Since I needed two bedrooms and two beds (I’m staying with my brother) I figured this was a great price and sent in my request. In the message, I put, “Me and my brother will be staying for 5 days.”
Alessandro accepted the request and agreed to everything, and the money for the BnB was accepted ($350 for 4 nights, 5 days). AFTER the money was taken out of my account, he then begins to get the details…
Alessandro: “I’m preparing the room for you. Just to be clear, will you want one king sized bed, or two twin beds?”
I realized he said “room” instead of “rooms”…
Me: “I thought that there would be at least two rooms. It is going to be me and my big brother, so we need two seperate rooms.”
Alessandro: “Okay guys, no problem. We have two seperate rooms available… but the price cannot be the same. The rate that you paid is just for ONE room. If you each want your own room, we might be able to bargain, but at least double price.”
So now I’m in this very annoying position. I’m forced to either cancel the BnB (the day we were supposed to arrive) and lose $100, or keep the BnB and bargain a much higher price than the listing said. This put A LOT of stress on me, and I was unsure of what was going to be the negotiation.
After we met up at the BnB and negotiated for the two rooms, he ended up charging me $100 more through PayPal and saying that it is not up to him, he is working for somebody else and he has to give them the money. I paid him the money, but was not pleased with the quality of the rooms. The only good thing about the BnB was the location.
* By the way, there were no other tennants occupying the extra rooms. If he wanted to be a man of his word, he would have given us at least two rooms for the same price as the listing said, and he would have accepted that HE was the one who made the mistake. The only reason that I left this long review is because he didn’t do that, AND the rooms were awful. Alessandro is a very nice guy so I hate to have to leave this review, but I was not pleased at all and I felt cheated.