A disappointing stay, to say the least. Not what we would ever expect of an Airbnb rental and certainly not what we would expect from >£250/night.
We arrived to find parts of the apartment in a filthy state. Someone had clearly been in residence at some point prior to our arrival.
The fridge was full of someone else's food, some mouldy. The back of the fridge was a 3' thick block of ice.
The kitchen was filthy - we pulled out a sieve which was 100% clogged with grease. All the cupboards were sticky and greasy.
The freezer door could not be closed as it had overfrosted - I fixed this myself and gave the fridge and freezer as good a clean as I could.
Someone else's dirty laundry was in the laundry bin in main bedroom (yes, really!!).
I went to put some of our clothes in chest of drawers but half were full of owner's clothes/underwear. I think if you are paying that amount of money for a rental, you would expect the owner to have moved their items to a locked cupboard or similar and full use of the chest of drawers in the master bedroom.
The en-suite had someone else's toiletries, including a half used bar of soap in the shower!
It felt like we were crashing overnight at a friend's pad who had hurriedly had a quick 'tidy-up' that morning.
Having found things in such a state, it was difficult to know how much if any 'proper' cleaning had taken place. We couldn't be sure if the sheets etc were fresh.
Airbnb tried to find alternative accommodation but options are virtually zero at 5 pm on the 1st day of a stay.
The problems grew.
During the 1st night our kids came into our room at 3am claiming their room was too hot and they couldn't sleep. The reason? The central heating was broken and stuck on permanently- in every room. Imagine this in a London apartment in August.
Ali was told about this 1st thing the following morning but it was not fixed until the following day - 2 nights of sweltering heat. Even then, we had to change our plans to let repair-chap in as Ali is overseas and there is nobody near who has keys/access if there is a problem during your stay (the cleaner apparently lives 1.5 hours away and was unavailable).
The dishwasher door is broken and there is no cutlery holder. This means all cutlery has to be hand-washed.
Ali was overseas and there was a time difference. We did not know if we were messaging him at lunchtime or in the middle of the night (which makes you feel uncomfortable).
There were no check-out instructions listed (check out is said to be 9 pm - which would be a great bonus usually). We just got a message on penultimate day asking if we could have our bags packed by 1 on last day as the cleaner was coming in at 1ish. In addition, we were asked to leave the keys with the cleaner.
There is no information provided in the apartment - It would have been nice to have even a small folder explaining how different things work, who to contact if problems etc etc.
Bottom line: This could and should be an amazing apartment in a great location. For us it was a really disappointing stay and not what we would ever expect of an Airbnb stay.