I feel it is in order to write an honest account of what happened during our stay in this property. The place is nice and properly equipped, as long as you don’t intend to use the fireplace. But i will get to that later. We are a family of five who booked the property in order to have a vacation celebrating my dads 70th birthday. Because it was in February, we were particularly attracted by the advertisement of a hot tub and a fireplace. Especially the fireplace. After we made the booking, we asked about these details and Nikita, the person in charge of booking said that there is no hot tub. He was referring to the bath tub and said that a hot tub is what portuguese people call a bath tub. Looking back, this does not make sense since i discovered that Nikita lives in England and probably knows what a hot tub is. But it was clarified that there is a fireplace. We got to the property and got greeted by Flori, who showed up 15 minutes late for the check-in. No biggie. We went inside and realized that there were not 4 beds as advertised, but 3 beds and a mattress to be put somewhere on the floor. Flori immediately went on the defensive blaming Nikita for allowing a group of 5 to book the place since it is supposed to be only for 4. We should make a complaint about Nikita she said, since she is having problems with him and she is trying to get rid of him anyway. This immediately created a tension in the room as you might imagine. As we were trying to figure out what to do as far as sleeping arrangements, Flori was chatting to Nikita on whatsapp when i saw by accident that Nikita had written to her “F$#&ing Israelis”. We come from many years working in the hospitality business and understand the need to vent about costumers, so we very delicately told Flori to make sure that when they do this, it is far away from the eyes and ears of said costumers. Again she went immediately on the defensive saying that she hadn’t seen it and that it was such an atrocity. Very quickly Nikita deleted the message. We asked about wood for the fireplace. Flori said that generally they do not provide wood but she would bring some for the night. In the evening we turned it on and the house filled up with smoke. It was cold and rainy and we had to open all the doors and windows in order to let it all out. I sent Flori a message to let her know about the situation and she replied she was aware of it. But chose not to tell us hoping that we wouldn’t notice. We used the normal heating for the rest of the vacation. All the dealings with Flori were very unpleasant but we were determined not to let it ruin our stay and had a wonderful time anyway. When the time for check out came, my mother said to Flori: i only have one comment: “When we came we noticed there wasn’t any soap for the shower (there was hand soap and dish soap), i suggest to warn future costumers about this so they are aware because usually all the other places we book provide it.” At this point Flori got aggravated and went on a completely disrespectful rant about how Nikita was charging to little for this place (don’t see how that is our fault, we paid what we were asked for), that this place was the most prestigious in all of Cascais, and that it is a self catering airbnb and we should know better.
After we left, Flori kept harassing us with messages about how we broke a light fixture (we tapped it lightly and it fell apart, obviously not intentional, forgot to mention it to her and subsequently apologised), and how we left the place a mess (which i know is not true since we did a clean up before we left. we did not mop the floor, i assume that is what the cleaning fee is for). I felt so harassed i had to block her from sending me whatsapp messages.
I have never written a bad review in my life. I much prefer to have a dialog with a person if i am not satisfied with the service provided. But in this case, i truly felt there was noone to talk to.