Our stay would have been a 5 star stay, had there not been ONE crucial instance of communication error. I give our stay a 3 star rating.
Michael was awesome about communication, up to the day we saw him in person for our stay. He greeted my girlfriend and I with a big smile, and a helping hand with our luggage for our 9 day stay, as soon as we stepped foot out of our Uber. As soon as we got into our studio apartment, he had maps available for the area, and provided great tips about transportation and food options close by. He had a set of keys for both of us, and tons of water in the fridge for us to hydrate after our long trip in.
The studio is quite small, but very functional. The main subway station we used to travel about the city, was only 4 blocks away; this was very convenient.
The only issue we ran into with Michael was that about 4 days into our trip, we came home in the evening to find that our towels and trashes had been taken out in exchange for new/fresh replacements. This was a little embarrassing for us. The room was kind of a mess in result of being out every day from the morning, till the evening, on the “tourist grind”. Had our “personal items” not been exposed upon this visit, it may have not been that big of a deal to us; we just would have appreciated being notified that he was coming in. Maybe we’re different, but our privacy is very important to us.
I messaged Michael, and asked if he had come in the room for those items(making sure it was, in fact, him), and he answered back shortly after saying, “Yes”. I then replied, hinting that “I wish we would have known you were coming in....also, we had taken the trashes out before already, and we were in hopes that we put them in the right area..”. This to me, was a subtle way of saying, please let us know before the next time you come in, so we can make sure our personal clothing is not out and the room looks decent.
For the first time, Michael did not respond back. We came home the very next night, after a long day in the city, to find store bought muffins sitting on the table; still no reply to my message. We really weren’t sure how to react to this. It’s his house, his stuff, I get it.... but it made us feel super awkward like he was just gonna come in at any given point, unannounced, and that’s just the way it was. All in all, I feel as if this awkward feeling could have easily been avoided by a quick message to just let us know.
Michael was very polite and very professional in person. Also, he was super cool and seemed very flexible in other conversations we had prior to the incident I explained. I don’t think he did any of that to be malicious or purposely make us uncomfortable, but it did.