Terrible Experience!!!! - The day before we were due to arrive I received an email from the large rental company *HIT Rental AG "informing" me that we would not have exclusive use of the apartment and that other people would be entering the apartment that myself and young children were staying in during our stay. There was no apology or optionality offered whatsoever. When I contacted airbnb they advised that this was in breach or their policies and that I could ask the host to cancel the reservation, losing our entire holiday flights, bookings, ZUrich cards, etc with no time to arrange alternative accomodation. This ruined our stay before we had even arrived and was extremely stressful for me as I was planning to do some work from the appartment but their message meant I would be in breach of my companies remote working and data security policies. The apartment was for us very, very expensive at around £700 for just three days stay, so this was totally unacceptable.
As for the apartment itself, it was dissapointing despite looking great on the photos - mostly clean apart from some rather grubby walls and ceilings, but the main issues were that it is a studio that has had an extra floor crammed in the roof and as others have mentioned the photos are deceptive - the roof is really really low, not for adults or kids over a few years old. The pictures showed a view of the river, but you would have to be craning your neck out the window to get a glimpse of this in reality. The location is pretty good, but even a normal conversation on the streets below with bars etc can be well heard in the flat so we were kept awake late at night so not really suitable for kids or anyone that wants a good nights sleep to then enjoy the city rested. To make matters worse, many of the windows have no curtains at all, whilst others have translucent thin blinds which block no lights, so the moment the suns up the apartment is bright...not what you need after been kept up late from the noise below on the narrow streets echoing up to the apartment.
The company that rents this property obviously has many many apartments across Switzerland and only really cares about profit over looking after guests (I didn't realize this when booking, thinking I was renting from "Stephanie" that would look after her apartment and guests).
Other points to note are that the TV is pointless unless you want to watch terrestrial German channels - Its not a smart TV so you can't even log into your subscription services such as disney, netflix etc. Also, we connected to the internet but it struggled to even load a basic page - I would rather there were no beds than no internet so this was an issue. You will struggle getting up the stairs with anything more than a rucksack by the way, and its on the top floor.
Given the very expensive price of this converted studio apartment, my advice to others would be that the tram links are so good and cheap in Zurich that staying just a few stops further from this apartment is significantly better value, not to mention quieter, larger etc....and no need to wear a helmet in areas (i.e. low, low ceiling)!
As mentioned, not sure why *HIT Rental AG thought it was okay to breach airbnb policies at very short notice without so much as an apology but this really ruined our experience before we had even arrived in Zurich. The company is called "HIT Rental AG" I add the * to denote that I think they should proberbly consider adding a certain letter to the start of their name to reflect their customer service.