Our stay didn’t have the best start. We had confirmation we were to collect the keys from a nearby key safe, but in error this had not been arranged. This left us stuck in the middle of the street, in a city we do not know, at 01:30 at night. For one hour we tried the key safe and called the two numbers provided (“If you meet any difficulty, please contact us to our service numbers, at any hour”). We understand that a mistake can happen, but what was really unacceptable to us was that after calling both provided numbers more than ten times, and leaving urgent voicemails; no-one answered, no-one called us back, and no-one came to help us. We had no choice but to find the nearest hotel at 03:00 in the morning instead of simply standing in the street all night.
When we came to the office the next day, we appreciate that there was an apology, and that the cost of our hotel was immediately refunded. Our contact was very helpful in assisting us moving our luggage from the hotel to the apartment, and checked us in quickly so we could begin our trip.
However, 1) our hotel stay was not a luxury upgrade, it was 4 hours of anxious sleep. We had still paid for four nights accommodation, having only stayed for three through no fault of our own. A refund on the first night has not been forthcoming. 2) The policy regarding bedding is very confusing as it assumes 2 people use each double bed. The listing says “note well the beds arrangement from the listing”. This listing has three separate real beds advertised, so it is appropriate to assume that all three real beds would be made available. There were three in our group and each required their own bed - we only discovered on the second night (the first night actually in the apartment) that only two of the beds had bedding and were available to use. This is not really acceptable as the apartment was advertised as having three real beds available. We feel at minimum the number of real beds advertised should be the number of beds available to guests.
In spite of this, we managed to enjoy our stay in Florence, which is an enchanting city. The apartment was otherwise as described, a good size in a great location - very much walkable to the city centre and key sites. The stairs up are narrow and steep as pointed out by others but no problem for us. It was clean, light, and the WiFi, hot water and air conditioning worked perfectly.