We stayed at Afo’s place for nearly four weeks. It is a brand new two bedroom penthouse flat, spacious, with an incredible terrace. The place is newly refurbished, so the bathrooms are lovely and it’s all very fresh looking. The kitchen is pretty small, with a lack of basic utensils. We had to buy a lot of basic items for our stay - a grater, baking trays for the oven, sponges for cleaning.
We ran into some problems upon arrival. The key was kept in a lockbox that is a considerable distance from the apartment, attached to a railing near a block of council houses. You have to sort of climb over a railing to get to it. It seemed a bit strange, and slightly dangerous, to keep the key there.
We were given only one key. I was staying in London with my partner for the month, and we both had work, so we really needed two keys to be able to access the flat when we weren’t together. Afo’s people initially told us no, we had to use the single key and leave it in the lockbox every time we left the flat. They did eventually agree to give us a spare, after we said that wouldn’t work.
The flat was clean-ish, on arrival. The tenant’s belongings were still everywhere. Football boots in the wardrobe, dirty bedding stuffed onto the shelves, bags of scrunched up wash cloths, there was lots of random stuff shoved into the wardrobe spaces. Drawers were full of paraphernalia, there were condoms in the bedside drawer, all sorts of stuff all over the place. It was quite a pain, we had to sort through all of his stuff and condense it into one area before we could begin to unpack our own things. It felt like the cleaners did half a job.
As we were there for a whole month, we expected the flat to be empty and not to have to sort through someone’s abandoned belongings.
We had to order COVID tests to the flat while we were there. The postman put them in the mailbox, only accessible with a key. Afo’s people refused to give us the mailbox key to access the tests. They said we should have been in to receive them. I found that extremely frustrating and pretty unacceptable. Paying for a long stay somewhere, you would expect to be able to freely receive mail, whether you are in or out.
Upon explaining all of this to the company that run this Airbnb home, they did offer to refund us half of the cleaning fee, and a night’s stay. We were really quite disappointed with the service provided during this stay. A different person responds every single time you message with often a simple question, with a very wordy answer, saying they’ll be in touch soon. It’s not a very efficient way of communication, and lacks continuity as it is always someone different responding. At this price, and for such a long stay, you would really expect 5 star service.
I would not stay here again. It was fine, but in my opinion, not worth the price tag. If the management company had been more helpful and given better customer service, it would have made the experience completely different. Things go wrong and accidents happen - that is part of life and unavoidable. But it is how they are dealt with that matters, and that is ultimately what you remember.