17 Days, October 2018 - The one bedroom apartment is tastefully decorated with both antique and contemporary furnishings. I cook and found the kitchen to be the best part of this apartment. It was well-designed and had a nice 4 hob/oven range. Solid cookware and lots of cook tools. There is a dishwasher and a clothes washer (no dryer, but there is a drying rack) in the kitchen. I found the apartment very comfortable and quiet. High ceilings, effective central heating, tasteful art hung on the walls. While I have a few concerns, I would still book this apartment again.
The apartment is in a lovely Georgian building in New Town. The flat is rather oddly located within the Georgian building. Not on the ground floor and not in the basement either. It is difficult to understand its location without seeing it. The windows are on the back part of the apartment and overlook a lovely walled garden. There are no windows, however, on the front part of the apartment because it is below ground. There is a staircase of twenty, carpeted steps that take you down into the apartment. There is only one entrance/exit door in this apartment.
The flat door key and/or latch need replacing. It was maddening when I returned to the flat each day laden with bags to find the key did not want to unlock the door and then having to put everything on the floor and coax the lock with the key until it unlocked the door. This often took some time to work.
The apartment is listed as belonging to Jane. I never saw Jane and I never heard from Jane. If there is a Jane, she has the apartment managed by what seems to be a property management company that did not like to use their names when communicating other than listing themselves as ‘Jane’s Team.’ I stay in Airbnb properties often and this is the first time I have encountered what seemed like secrecy in ownership of an apartment. A bit troubling.
After booking, ‘Jane’s Team’ contacted me via Airbnb and instructed me to go to their webpage to confirm my details and schedule arrival time. Very inappropriate, because they were asking me to go outside of Airbnb secure platform to some unknown weblink. This raised security and data protection issues. I did not know who they were or where there weblink would take me and I did not respond. I did report them to Airbnb, because their request violated Airbnb guest’s security policy. Even after reporting them, they kept insisting that I go to their webpage. Best security strategy you can take using Airbnb is to only communicate with your host via your Airbnb account. Never via texting. It protects you. I laughed when a day after checking in, ‘Jane’s Team’ texted me asking how I would rate the cleanliness of the apartment on arrival. I have no idea how they got my number. It was strange.