Very pretty apartment. Bespoke designed down to the radiators, light switch knobs and gorgeous architectural mouldings on the ceilings and art on the walls. Owners have great taste.
Property was listed as a three bed, two and a half bath flat. It’s a two bedroom, four story apartment with a closet sized study with a pullout couch. This misrepresentation sets the stage for the rest of the issues with this property that is billed by Ivy as a luxury stay. Spoiler alert/TLDR version: it isn’t.
Entry/alarm: Disclaimer, I don’t generally read emails sent to me by AirBnB managers. I hope that owners have inserted the information within the AirBnB app, which is why I and others use the AirBnB app; simplicity. In this case, when I opened the door, the alarm began to go off – quietly at first, then rising to an ear splitting 100 decibel scream that probably alerted everyone within a five block radius that the world was at an end. The instructions to turn off the alarm were but one sentence long, but the management company decided to put that information in a separate email, so I missed that part. Yes, it’s my fault for not reading the email, but it seems to me that a one-sentence instruction that simple ought to be in the AirBnB App instructions, and I wish that AirBnB would require renters to improve access to that needed information. It only took Ivy Management four minutes to answer me, and so the passers by got quite a kick out of our embarrassment. I admittedly got frustrated at this and suggested while I was waiting for them to respond that “Why don’t you just refund our stay and I’ll go stay in a hotel”. I was not thrilled. I used the word “Ridiculous” with them to describe my situation. Put the instructions to turn off the alarm in the AirBnB app, and then this doesn’t happen ever again. Simple.
The physical property:
The lamp shade in the master bedroom is broken and sits next to the lamp on the dresser, so that when you want some extra light and turn it on, it’s a bit like having a car with its bright lights shining in your face. I alerted the management team to this and sent them a picture. No response. The lights in the dining area are out. The melamine cabinet face in the kitchen has delaminated and this is not reflected in the pictures of the property. The water heater was turned off; we had to figure out on our own how to turn that on during day two of cold showers and baths. Would have messaged them, but they hadn’t responded to the other issues anyway. The shower heads sprayed water everywhere when turned on, so I unclogged them on my own until they sprayed correctly. There is a Nespresso machine on the counter, but no pods or sugar were left out for it, and the location where the pods are stored is labeled “Private”. There are no ice trays, which I found strange, even here. There is a “precious portrait” in the study (that’s the room with a very uncomfortable pullout sofa with a poor mattress listed as a “bedroom” with no closet and no drawers for clothing or personal items so that my son’s items were stuffed in his suitcase and on the floor all week), that requires that you keep the windows closed and the shades drawn at all times so as eliminate its exposure to sunlight. This was not mentioned in the property description; only in emailed instructions. This would have changed my feeling about the apartment (along with the fact that a study is not a bedroom). With the removal of the study to be used as a bedroom, there is no workspace here at all except the dining table, which has no lighting above it because the light bulbs are out (they blink and then turn off when switched on). If you do set up your laptop and do some work while here, the internet access is terribly, terribly slow. When everyone is in the home, if two or more people are streaming, they will experience interruptions. Gaming for my children was not possible. You’ll get one pillow per person.
For nearly $7000 for the week, I didn’t expect to have to make a bed out of a sofa. Ivy has updated the listing (while we were staying here), but we were mislead into renting this property. Ivy didn’t bother to accurately identify the property. We wouldn’t have rented it otherwise. I didn’t expect to have to ration Internet usage, clean shower heads, or figure out how to turn on a hot water heater, or purchase an extra pillow for a “luxury” stay.
The bright spot is the location; 5 minutes walk to Harrods and shopping, cabs and restaurants, 200 feet from coffee shop; the locale cannot be beaten.
I will not rent from Ivy Management again. I found them to be unresponsive when I asked questions after the alarm incident and didn’t appreciate that the apartment wasn’t ready for us. Based on this experience, I don’t think they have an eye for detail. I think they’re trying to do this on the cheap, and that’s not a good look for a $6600 per week rental. A thousand dollars a day should equate to a luxury stay experience, and this simply isn’t that. It’s a stripped-down stay with almost no perceptible amenities. Priced as it is, it is quite a poor value, especially considering that it was listed incorrectly, and not acknowledged even after I pointed that out, with no response.
Checkout is easy. No folding of laundry or stripping of beds or any of that nonsense, and the trash is generally easy to figure out. Checkout time is 10:00 AM. Standard European check out in our experience. As always, we swept up, did our dishes, tidied up, and left the place near spotless.