We booked the flat for 6 of us for a long weekend in Manchester, the location was great and there was a tram stop just across the road from the building.
When we arrived the first thing we did was make up the sofa bed as we would need to make use of all beds available due to the size of our group. We had to put our own sheets on the duvet which by doing so highlighted how dirty the duvet and pillows were for the sofa bed. Once the sofa bed was folded out we could see that under the slats had dirty socks, food remnants and was generally very unclean. We also found unwashed glasses left in the cupboards (some had lipstick marks on so hadn’t been through the dishwasher at all). We notified the owner of this and they did buy fresh bedding that evening for us and sent the cleaner back to deal with the issues.
We returned late that night after an evening out to find only one glass had been washed amongst the other dirty ones. The response I received when I queried this was “only 1 glass was pointed out”. We would assume that if the cleaner was going to go into the cupboard to clean the 1 glass they would have at least checked the others in there and cleaned those too (the other glasses weren’t hard to miss as they were all dirty) After this we cleaned all glasses, plates and cutlery before use as we just didn’t trust what had been cleaned.
The first evening I found some sort of needle in a plastic casing by the bedside table of the main bedroom. We were not happy with this as weren’t sure what it was or why it was left on the floor. I queried this again and the owner believes it may have been something from the furniture, however, it looked more like a finger prick needle. Even so, it should not have been left on the floor. If we had been travelling with children they could have easily found it.
During our stay we also received a parking ticket on each car even though this was advertised as “free on street parking”. I queried this with the owner again and she said “on event days there are certain restrictions”. We didn’t park on any yellow lines and the event restriction sign was on the opposite side of the road which had yellow lines therefore we assumed it was for that side.
If the owner knew parking tickets were likely to be handed out on event days this should be made clear in the parking information rather than incorrectly advertising as free.
We also found that racist usernames were left on the Netflix account (from previous renters), we did try to change this however the tv remote buttons weren’t all working correctly, I did notify the owner of this so hopefully it is changed.
There is no towel rail or anything to hang wet towels on in the main bedroom en-suite, just a note that it may be beneficial to add something like this to help towels dry and not be constantly damp. There were also dark coloured hairs all over the en-suite bathroom floor when we arrived.
Overall, we paid over £500 for the weekend at the flat and with the cleanliness (especially as covid is still a thing), needle and parking charges it was not worth the money, we would appreciate some money back.
Note - I do have photos to back up the claims made in this review.