Positives: The location is great - right across the street from the Paddington train station. The price is also somewhat of a positive. It’s a decent value for the location.
Now, let’s get into the negatives. The owner had reminded us several times to text when when our flight landed so she could make sure someone was at the flat to let us in and give us the keys. I liked her persistence here.
So, I text her when we land and let her know we’ll be there in about an hour. She’s says “Great” just ring the flat when you get there and somebody will come down to let you in. After traveling for 8+ hours my wife and I wanted to drop our things, take a shower and head on to our plans that afternoon (traveling to a match at Wembley).
When we get there we ring the flat and nobody comes down. No big deal. We give it a few more minutes, ring again. Still nothing. I text the owner back to see what the deal is and she says she’s looking into it. What she was doing for the past hour is somewhat confusing.
5 minutes turns to 20. So I call. She tells us her daughter was supposed to be at the flat to give us the keys but she put her friend in charge of doing that and now she (the owner) is unable to get in touch with either of them. Again, how this wasn’t identified earlier is beyond me. Total lack of concern for her guests. Oh, by the way, the owner is 3+ hours out of the city so zero chance she can come meet us to sort this out. I honestly thought this was a scam.
The owner suggests we rent a locker at the train station to put our bags in so we can be on our way to Wembley and we can sort out the key exchange after. Not the most attractive option. So, the only alternative the owner presented to us was to take a cab across town to a cafe and ask for the friend that has our keys. Which is what we did. What choice did we have? Once we got in it was pretty obvious that the owner’s daughter and/or friend actually live in the flat by the trash left in the bins and the wet shower.
All said and done, the location is great. If you decide to go with this place I suggest being overly cautious to make sure the owners have their stuff together in terms of coordinating keys.