The building is in an attractive and convenient area of the UES. The apartment on the 14th floor is spacious and sunny. Kitchen is stocked with all the basic cookware and dinnerware. The unit was clean when I moved in, and housekeeping service (while expensive even by New York City standards) was commendable.
However, the apartment is sorely in need of renovation and the furnishings (with the exception of the high-quality bedding) are dilapidated. This is not luxury accommodation as advertised by Churchill, which owns and manages several units in the building and several hundred units in the area. I was way overcharged for what was delivered.
The signs of deterioration include: cracks in the bathroom tiles and grouting, loose and broken fixtures, broken refrigerator door handle (which had been hastily reglued), sagging sofabed and chair seats, cheap plastic hooks glued to walls and doors, metal window blinds in poor condition, gashes in the laminate flooring, stains on the walls and inside cabinets, rattling front panel on the bedroom a/c unit.
The most pressing problems which I encountered during my 35-day stay were:
•	unusable wi-fi: frequent loss of connectivity for days at a time and inadequate speed when wi-fi was available
•	inability to sleep in the bedroom on hot nights (which in the summer is most nights) due to the rattling a/c unit
•	clogged bathtub and broken bathtub drain
I brought these issues to Churchill’s attention by phone and by email, however their response time was very slow and their communication was appalling. Each time I called or emailed to follow up on a previous issue they reacted as if I was raising a new problem, and they could only tell me they were entering it “into the system” for someone else to follow up. The buck-passing was legendary and it took almost daily follow-up on my part to get any action. A few of the more minor issues were eventually corrected but took weeks rather than days. The wi-fi problem was resolved only in the last week of my stay and required several visits. The bedroom airconditioner noise problem was never resolved so I camped out most nights on the (springless) living room sofa bed.
Two of Churchill’s staff whom I met – the housekeeping supervisor and one of their inspectors – were competent and well-trained. They were at the mercy, however, of the managers who schedule their time and did not have the power to resolve problems more quickly.
In short, a combination of poor maintenance and dysfunctional customer service contributed to a highly disappointing experience.