Firstly, I wanted to leave a great review. The apartment is gorgeous and wonderfully decorated, in a wonderful location.
To begin, there is no smart entry - a time needs to be booked for arrival to be met. With uncertainty of flights, this might be tricky for some. However, upon arrival we loved the apartment.
Now for the reason this isn’t a 5 star review. Italy is in a heatwave at the moment, on red alert. This is not our host’s fault. What is is the fact that the air conditioning wasn’t working. This was compounded by the fact there was one fan only that actually worked.
I immediately drew this to our host’s attention and was repeatedly told that we weren’t using the controller properly (one for three units). Saturday night was unbearable and, for the bedroom without the fan, the window had to be opened. This led to my son being bitten everywhere by mosquitos, which bites then became infected and needed medical treatment.
Sunday still no aircon and no replacement fan. The host reset the aircon and this then worked in one bedroom only - but not in the living area and not in the second bedroom. Eventually, we were told that somebody would look at the aircon the next day. He came late morning on the Monday (bearing in mind we had now been without aircon since our arrival) and advised that the aircon needed regassing in two of the units as the other one was okay (this was taking the temperature down to about 24 degrees - but I felt I could manage and the priority was the other bedroom and living area). He said that it was ‘entirely unacceptable’ in the current heat.
So the engineer was planned to come on the Tuesday morning. (Now no aircon since Saturday). We felt we had no choice but to let Airbnb know - there is a three-day window to issue a complaint. This was clearly a red rag to a bull as the promised engineer did not arrive.
We did everything we could to resolve this issue amicably - we contacted the owner repeatedly, as well as sending numerous WhatsApp messages to the agent. If somebody had turned up with two proper fans on the Sunday, this would at least have been a gesture of caring that we were incredibly uncomfortable.
Florence is beautiful- and baking in at heatwave at this time. If we had had a cool haven to return to, if we could have actually used the living area, if my son wasn’t in pain with infected bites, then our trip would have been lovely. As it is, it wasn’t.
I hate to write this. But I also hate that my special trip was spoiled by lack of care by the people who could have made the difference.
We left a bottle of wine in the fridge for the next person. I truly hope that this will ensure the aircon is fixed for them, so they can appreciate this lovely apartment and lovely city.