Staying at this place is an imposition. When I travel, I consider my requirements not to be too high: Having a bed to have a good sleep in a healthy environment, so that I can have power for the day, is absolutely all I need. When I arrived, everything was FULL OF FLIES, order of 100. That includes the kitchen where most flies were, but there were also many, order of 20-25, in the bedroom. People are very different, but me personally, I totally cannot sleep at night when once in a few seconds, a fly tries to land on my skin.
So, I arrived one day later than I had booked, so the landlady would have had a lot of time to at least try to fix the fly problem - she had done NOTHING. So I spent my first evening in NYC buying these fly traps which are sticky in order to try to solve the problem. A lot of the flies I still had to kill manually. It took me THREE DAYS (and sleepless nights) until at least my room was more or less free of flies. I was (and am still) sick in my respiratory system (coughing) from all the fumes from the fly traps and sprays. As a result, of my ONE WEEK to visit NYC, I managed to go out on TWO DAYS only, because of the fly situation and the consequences. My original plan was to have and enjoy a week of vacation, not to take care of a fly infestation and to destroy my health - and to pay for that in addition.
I asked the landlady if she would find it fair if she would voluntarily waive the additional cleaning fee - since really I WAS THE PERSON WHO CLEANED IT FROM ALL THE FLIES - but no chance she will realize her mistakes. Instead, she tells me things like "A DEAL IS A DEAL" which I find ridiculously impertinent regarding the situation.
Regarding the rest, I will not mention everything. But very many things in the kitchen are STICKY or even really DIRTY, lots of things ar broken. All in all, this was TOTALLY UNPROFESSIONAL AND UNACCEPTABLE, and I really regret paying for this. I am aware that airbnb is a totally different form of living together than e.g. a hotel - people share life in a much more social way together and one should not mind to encounter smaller problems that can then be solved with the landlord. But this here is nothing but a CARELESS way to GENERATE MONEY WITHOUT GIVING ANYTHING IN RETURN.
I am 27 yrs old, usually in good health and not too picky. Book this, you better be tougher than me.
I also have no doubts that the landlady is the type of character who - although she did not have time to fight the flies - will write a very lengthy comment here to swipe this under the carpet. Good luck with that!