Check-in was pretty much flawless but things went downhill from there onwards. The apartment sits in a prime location between Trindade and Faria Guimarães stations, with a couple or more buses a minute or two away by foot... check-out was also very easy
This should have been a gem but other than the check-in, check-out and location everything else was pretty terrible:
- host communication (for problems arising just after check-in and afterwards). took a week until we got an answer, lucky we were even eligible for Airbnb's AirCover
- exposed electrical wiring/sockets
- broken edge of wall near the window (+mold)
- speaking of windows, with the breeze the apartment gets its a shame the windows were very hard to open and close. the small fans provided are pretty pointless since they don't do much (good luck counting on those in July-August)
- bathroom sink and bidet are half clogged (have a video of the sink)
- no cleanup service mid-week. we stayed for 2 weeks and did our own laundry including towels. we took the linen to a laundromat at our expense since the washing machine was busy with the towels and some more clothing. also bought our own detergent since the flat didn't have any
- there's only one tv remote control (for 2 TVs) and it had ice age old batteries. same goes for the wall clock. needless to say we bought some since the host wasn't responsive enough
- the toilet itself is almost brown on the inside. bleach powder (that.. surprise! we bought..) helped a little but it still looks very unpleasant
- some other basic things we had to buy: salt, pepper, cooking oil, toilet paper (ran out, never resupplied)
- dining table has some unremovable blemishes, and some holes poked in it. of course the pictures never showed this
- intercom is very quiet (only when ringing from outside, otherwise - works as expected)
- cherry on top, almost the last night I went out late on my own and when I got back the door wouldn't unlock, the cylinder just kept bouncing. didn't even bother at that point other than taking video evidence
host said they scheduled maintain for the structural things. for other things we were told a person would come and we were notified beforehand. nobody came over
p.s.
I hold photo and/or video evidence of most of what has been laid out here. some of which were sent over to the host and Airbnb support which helped very much albeit I wish we would have contacted them earlier