POSITIVE points of the Airbnb :
- Nice and spacious
- Located in a great neighborhood
- Relatively good equipment
NEGATIVE points of the Airbnb :
- Mehboob hires someone (Serdar) to manage his apartments. He is not very helpful nor reactive, and we had to insist for him to come when something went wrong. You can tell he's not aware of m standards you want to have in the hospitality business. Below, the problems we encountered :
- Nails are coming out the floor in the kitchen and created holes in half our socks. It even hurted us multiple times until we asked Serder for a carpet to put over it.
- A window in the 1st room is very fragile and broke 2 times. My roommate had to sleep the last night with the window open.
- We only had 1 copy of the keys despite being 2. We had to ask numerous time before getting a double.
- We had trouble arriving at the Airbnb (our flight was late). We informed Serder of that despite not having a turkish sim card. When we finally arrived, he told us "You should've told me when you left the airport". We had 4 suitcases and when I was bringing them upstairs 2 at a time, instead of proposing his help he told : "you can carry one at a time". If you're not going to help, it's better to just not say anything sometimes.
- The shower broke 2 times. The first time, we insisted so Serder could come and fix it (by entering the shower with dirty shoes on and not cleaning afterwards by the way). The 2nd time, we didn't have the energy to deal with him so we just used it like that.
- Internet is quite good in the 1st room. Not so good upstairs.
- Balat is a great neighborhood with great people we loved it. However, if you are staying short term and plan on visiting mainly Sultanhamet, you might consider looking for an Airbnb that is closer.
That's all I remember for now (and it's quite enough to explain the 2 stars rating).
Great potential for this place, but really poorly managed.