Pros
Location: very nice location, walking distance from Madame Tussaud’s, London business school. Shops were close by. There are nice restaurants at walking distance too.
Cons
1. Both the room windows open up on the street, which we felt was a bit unsafe plus noisy. Especially because the main road is not too far off, which means you could hear all sirens and cars on the road, and also passerby’s.
2. The common area and kitchenware was not clean. Mugs had tea stains and lipstick marks on them. The cleaning team didn’t do a good job of making sure all kitchenware was cleaned when we entered. The sofa and chairs in the common room weren’t clean too. They looked old and worn out making the common area our least fav room to hang out in.
3. Place is really small and cramped. The pictures make the place look big which is why we rented it for 5 guests. 2 couples and a young sibling. The first room was big enough to accommodate a couple but the second one was really small with a very noisy light weight bed. No cupboard space and definitely no space to move around. It was a major disappointment.
4. We asked the host if they can arrange for an air bed in the common area for our young sibling, they said there’s one already in the flat and can be used to accommodate one person. However, when we entered there was no air bed in sight, after rummaging though the stuff for days (because they didn’t know where it was in the flat) we found a single air bed but it didn’t have an air pump. After requesting them to drop off a pump for days, they sent someone 5 days after check in, but claimed that the pump they brought was wrong which blasted the airbed. For the next two days they kept promising to drop off a new air bed but didn’t send anyone. 2 days before our check out (day 7) when my phone fell behind the sofa, we found a box that had a BRAND NEW AIRBED in it. It was there all along and NO ONE at hostmaker thought to inform us. They kept promising to drop one off when in fact there was one in the flat all along and they just didn’t tell us for some reason. This is poor management at best. My cousin had to sleep on the carpet for 7 days before we found out he didn’t have to. This incident frustrated us to core!
5. The team promised us a free clean up to makeup for the confusion on day 3, we requested the cleaning to be done on day 5 instead but guess what? No one came, and when they did we were due to check out 2 days later so it didn’t do much for us. There were no extra pair of linens in the house, so we had to sleep on dirty linens for 7 days before the host informed us that there is indeed an extra pair under our bed *arrrgghhhh*. Again, the hostmaker team was ill informed when we repeatedly told them about dirty linens. This was Piya (the owner) who informed us, and was apologetic about the whole incident.
6. Communication with the hostmaker team was very frustrating. You’d speak to someone new every time you messaged which meant explaining everything all over again. Plus the team was clueless about the whereabouts of things in the house.
7. Only one pair of keys was provided to us which made it tough to manage.
All in all, it was nicely located, poorly managed place with a team that is so clueless that they will literally ruin your trip. They have made my husband an Airbnb non believer, we cringe at the thought of renting a place again EVER.