We picked this apartment because we wanted to end the last leg of our stay in Madrid on a high note. From the pictures, the place looked amazing. We were never contacted by Miriam at any point and dealt only with Aaron. Nothing in our communication with Aaron before we arrived gave us any red flags or concerns, but once we arrived it became clear pretty quickly that the apartment was not what we had expected.
First, check in. We arrived a little early but we'd kept Aaron updated on the time and he told us that we could check in via the service he used with a link once we arrived. We followed instructions and nothing worked. We called Aaron and then waited for the woman who had left earlier after "cleaning" to arrive and assist us. She could not get in either. She called someone and then we waited longer a second time for her to retrieve a key to get into the building. Turns out something had been disconnected in the apartment before we'd arrived.
My wife immediately noticed that the kitchen island was dirty with what looked like a grease smear across the wood (what you would expect when something is cleaned with a dirty rag). We were already so tired from a long train ride and from waiting to get into the apartment that we didn't notice until the woman was gone how dirty the space really was.T he apartment itself was large and really pretty at first glance, but it didn't take long before we saw the sad neglected state of the place.
The kitchen island and counter was not clean, they had a film of grease. A dirty wet rag was left hanging to dry near the sink and there was water around the sink on the wooden island. The bottom of the kitchen island was broken, the shelves were dirty and dusty with thick film, the drawers were disgusting and looked like they may have had rodent droppings. The coffee machine was filthy. There were no clean dish towels of any sort, there were no napkins, no paper towels...nothing.
We opened a large closet in the kitchen hoping to find towels and that was when the real shock came. In the age of COVID, when cleanliness and sanitation should be an absolute paramount concern, we discovered a huge open bag of dirty linens that was obviously where the sheets and towels from previous guests were being stored. There were at least two other bags that this bag was on top of but we didn’t want to even touch anything so we just closed the door and tried not to think about it.
My wife found a small bottle of some sort of cleaner and used the wet rag that had been left to try and wipe things down as best she could, but we kept finding that really nothing had been cleaned more than just a superficial swipe. There were literally layers of dust that you could run a finger through all over the flat.
We were left two small single bath towels and two small hand towels. I immediately had to use one of the towels to sop up the water that came spilling out onto the hallway floor the moment I opened the door to the unused washing machine. I shut it quickly and never opened it again. So much for any plan to do laundry. I texted Aaron immediately about the washer but never received a response. So now we were down a bath towel.
The kitchen was bad, but the bathroom was worse. The floors were absolutely disgusting with dirt, spots on the floor, hairs on the floor. The floor around the toilet was especially gross and had obviously not been cleaned. The shower drain did not work and I took a shower with the water barely coming out so it wouldn’t overflow onto the bathroom floor. There was no bath mat of any sort, so I used a small hand towel. We were now down to a single bath towel and small hand towel for several days between us.
The living room was dirty as well. The sofa had a dirty throw on it that covered a slipcover with huge stains. The shelves in the living room had what looked like dirt and/or black mold of some sort. I cannot adequately communicate how dirty things were, so I took plenty of photos.
At this point, we contact Aaron again via the messaging system here to let him know about the concerns we had. We told him that the apartment space was beautiful but we were very disappointed with the lack of cleanliness. It was a long note of several paragraphs where we offered to be available at the flat the next day if he wanted to send someone to clean and look at the washer, shower drain, etc. We asked if we could get more towels and a bath mat, and at least some sort of paper towels or dish towel for the kitchen. Our main concern was that the apartment needed to be cleaned properly.
We got a curt (like literally two sentences) response from Aaron while we were out of the apartment letting us know that he would send the woman from our check in to leave more towels, dish towels and to look at the drain. When my wife asked when she would be coming (expecting that it would be the next day) he said she was upstairs cleaning and would be down later that day. When we arrived back to the flat, it looked like the living area floor had been swept, a hand towel had been put on the floor as a bath mat, there were some clean towels set out, and two new dishtowels were on the kitchen island. The bathroom had still not been cleaned, the drain still did not work. And the wet towels had been added to the