Me and my friend visited Tom’s apartment just a week ago, for two weeks. First, I have to say that Tom is extremely responsive and accommodating. He provides all information you need with clarity and detail. This was very important to us, as we were coming from a far away country (Greece) and we wanted to feel that we can always ask and get a quick and helpful response. Thank you Tom for this. However, we were unhappy with the apartment itself as it was lacking the basic, minimum and reasonably expected qualities and it was not 100% how you expect it to be based on the description and the photos. Specifically:
1. Some dirty parts - the air ventilation fan on the ceiling was full of thick (probably from ages ago) dust and there were some human hair in one of the bath towels that there were left in the apartment. In addition, there were some -small to be honest- bits of left overs from food in the refrigerator. Even the cleaning sponge in the kitchen was dirty, looked like used many times from previous visitors. Shower gel, hand-wash etc., they were all half full and used, not brand new. There were even scratches on the walls and a strange liquid on one of the main pipes in the sofa-bed area (dark brown liquid).
2. Noice coming from some appliances inside the apartment - where do I start with this one. The refrigerator (to be precise the freezer) was making non-stop, unbelievable and to describe it accurately “unbearable” noise. Remember this is a studio apartment and every noise is like next to you. We were forced to turn it off completely cause we could not sleep and this was for the whole two weeks - translating to extra costs for buying breakfast and food from outside as could not store anything in the refrigerator. Now, the heating unit. Even though this one did not produce non-stop noise, nonetheless, when it did, especially during the night, the noise was loud enough to wake me up, making it extremely difficult -if not impossible- to sleep again. At least for a light sleeper like me - my friend was not so bothered by this noise to be honest as he is a heavy sleeper.
3. Some broken items in the apartment - A shelve door in the cabinet (under the unit in the middle) was broken, it fell on my knee while standing next to it. The same goes for one of shower sliding doors in the bathroom. In addition, and this was very very disappointing, the sliding covers in one window (the blinds/shades) were half broken, totally in contrast with the pictures available, which resulted to no privacy -neighbours can properly see you- and a lot of light coming into the apartment from very early in the morning, causing again severe problems with the sleep. Honestly, I was waking up 5:30-6 every day.
4. Not accurate description of the distance to Times Square - in the description of the apartment, it is mentioned, that that the closest train from the apartment to Times Square is 2 stops, while the closest train station is at least 6 stops to Times Square.
One last thing is that after reporting the above problems to Tom, he came into the apartment, in order to fix some of them, without us being present nor letting us know in advance and consenting for him to go into the apartment. We really felt that our privacy was invaded, big time, and this was something that made us feel very very uncomfortable - this was the last thing we wanted to feel especially as we were visiting from a far away. I understand and appreciate that he had good intentions as he wanted to take care of the above problems ASAP -he could not reach us on the phone- but we were not expecting him to come into the apartment without us being present or having previously consented.
Hopefully (and I believe he will) Tom will address the above issues in order to match the minimum expectations of every visitor, irrespective of whether it is AirBnB or hotel, to such a wonderful city like NYC. Thank you.