Our stay at the apartment wasn’t great to be honest and we thought it best to leave a review based on experience and what we found. We are, by no stretch of the imagination, serial complainers but feel its only right to give a full list of the problems we found:
Communications: This was very difficult, initially we thought it was a blip as we messaged Francisca several days before our departure to finalise arrival arrangements and were left hanging for two days. Messages were sent via AirBnb, so email, SMS, and WhatsApp. Comms were poor following the reports we sent about the apartment, and we’ll come on to that in the rest of this review.
We arrived at approximately 11am on Wednesday, we agreed with Francisca, eventually, that we could get the key and drop our luggage off whilst the apartment was cleaned. We access the apartment, dropped the luggage, the cleaners had obviously not yet been. As agreed, we’d be out until 3pm to give the cleaners the time needed to clean the apartment.
We returned at 3pm and were relived that the apartment had been cleaned and made ready for us. However, we soon discovered that the cleaning was extremely poor with dust on lamp shades, grubs and bugs, hair on the floor and shower trays, crumbs on the couch, smears on the work surfaces and dirty looking throws on the sofas.
I immediately let Francisca know of the issues and she responded to say she’d speak to the cleaners and ask that they come back later in the day and get it cleaned. As at that point we’d spend hours travelling and want to catch up a little sleep before heading out for dinner, we asked that the cleaners be sent the following day. We agreed that they’d come between 11am and 2pm the following day (Thursday).
Before we left for Dinner I messaged via WhatApp pictures of the issues plus more I’d found whilst staying, these were a light switch with exposed wires that was hanging off on the landing, a dirty electrical plug point, grimy toilet basins, dusty lamp shades, hair in shower trays, dust and crumbs on sofa throws, dust on stair case, smears on worksurfaces, dust on the television, dust and grim on the sideboard and coffee table, torn cushion covers and pulls etc on the throws.
On the Thursday Francisca messaged to let me know that she’d been unable to send the cleaners but would try and get the cleaners to come and it may be difficult getting cleaners to come when we are out of the apartment. Obviously, we are at this point trying to enjoy our holiday without the hassle, we remained flexible and said we’d be out of the apartment every day between 11am and 2pm and that Francisca was to let me know in advance once arrangements had been made.
On Friday evening, having not received any further communications about the cleaners we decided to clean the apartment ourselves. I let Francisca know that I was very disappointed that nothing was done and that we were prepared to allow this to drag on any further.
That was the end of the communications from Francisca, nothing further, no apology, shocking.
The apartment is located excellently, just a stones through from the picturesque Pine Walk. With lots of great amenities nearby. It is extremely tired and run down in places.
Starting on the outside, tiles are chipped and hanging off the steps. There is an outhouse which has the washing machine. The washing machine leaks all over the patio. The patio furniture is dirty and tired.
The downstairs WC was dirty as described earlier, with curling vinyl stickers on the tiles.
In the kitchen, the fridge is rusty around the edges and stained inside. The plug doesn’t fit in the plug hole making dish wishing by hand a challenge.
The lounge has dirty looking throws over both sofas, these have pulls in them too. It was impossible to find any decent television channels. The internet connection was extremely slow and intermittent too. The patio shutter switch was exposed without a cover, dangerous if you have inquisitive kids. The air-con unit was noisy.
The master bedroom’s air conditioning unit kept leaking debris which we had to keep sweeping up. Again, this air-con unit was noisy and ineffective mostly.
The second bedroom’s air conditioning unit was noisy, and impossible to have on if you wanted to get some sleep.
The third bedroom we only used for storage, no air con in that room by the way.
The main bathroom’s show curtain was dirty and stained. A big issue here was the noise the toilet made following flushing, like the SS Queen Mary leaving port. So, we tried to avoid using this at night so not the disturb the neighbours.
More generally, and this is out of the control of the owner, but one to be aware of if you like a little calmness in the evening, the complex has very thin walls. We could hear the adjoining apartments occupiers running up and down stairs, running about their apartment, television sounds and conversations. Unfortunately, the usually started from about 10pm and went on until midnight plus.
So, in summary, we had a poor stay, we received poor communications, were left to clean the apartment ourselves, we left with two exposed electric switches, poorly maintained and outdated equipment.
We cannot recommend anyone stay in this apartment until such time as the faults, flaws and equipment are sorted.