Hi there,
I wanted to tell you about the apartment we rented the last time we were in Mexico City. We booked in advance because it was relatively well priced for the Condesa area (between 30 and 35 euros per night).
When I got to the city and was at the airport, the owner wrote me to say that they were doing construction work on the roads, and this had affected the water supply as it was a bit brown and not drinkable. He offered us to move to another apartment for a couple of days until everything returned to normal or to buy us drinking water for the days the incident lasted.
We decided to stay there since we had been in Costa Rica for a month, changing hotels every two days. We were exhausted and wanted to stay in one place.
Then we found out that the other apartment he wanted to move us to was dirty, so there really wasn’t much of a choice.
The owner was friendly and explained everything to us well.
We found out that the washing machine did not work and that there was a laundry in the building, but you had to pay. Things were already starting badly. In addition, in the description of the property it said that once a week someone would come to clean and then it turned out that no one was going to clean, they only brought you clean sheets every 8 days.
The kitchen was small and poorly equipped. The pots and pans were a thousand years old, just like the rest of the stuff.
There was lack of cleanliness everywhere.
The WiFi was quite slow and sometimes dropped.
The bed also made a lot of noise, you sat down and the whole building heard it.
Overall, it was a very old apartment that was crying out for a good cleaning and refurbishment. The good thing is that the owner had been kind and had managed the incidents that had arisen well. So, the overall experience in the apartment was not bad, especially because it was very well located, and we were relatively comfortable.
When I put the review on Airbnb, I gave it a 3 out of 5 and listed all the things the property lacked, to which the owner responded extremely jerkish and even xenophobic. If I had known that he was going to answer that way, I would give him the lowest score.
My evaluation:
Pros
- Great location near the metro and the bus stop.
- Jorge is a good host; he always responded quickly and knew how to resolve incidents.
- 24-hour security in the building.
Cons
- Very old building and apartment.
- The washing machine in the apartment is damaged and it costs you 40 pesos to wash and another 40 pesos for the dryer. This is not explained in the property description. Also, you must go up and down 3 floors every time you must wash.
- In the description of the accommodation, it says that a person comes to clean and change the sheets once a week. That’s not true. Every 8 days the host leaves the change of sheets at reception, nothing more.
- The extractor fan in the kitchen turns on, but it doesn’t work well and when we were cooking, the whole apartment filled with smoke.
- The kitchen is not well equipped.
- The mattress and pillows are very worn.
- There is a gym in the building, but the machines don’t work so it’s useless.
Owner’s response:
“Thank you for your comments, we will shortly remove this property from the Airbnb page. We think that customers for this price have more expectations and for us it does not mean any business; on the contrary, with difficulties we pay maintenance. I’m sorry you didn’t like it and we better stop renting it. Long-term rentals for Mexicans are more profitable.”
Privately, he wrote me about 20 more paragraphs saying that his apartment was going to be put up for sale for 140,000 euros in case I wanted to buy it from him. To top it off, arrogant. “That it was not worth renting to foreigners and that Mexicans were capable of paying well for the night.”
I always try to leave the reviews as objective as possible and I think it is essential to know how to receive negative comments. It costs nothing to answer, “Thank you for the stay, your comments help us to improve”. At least he wouldn’t come off as pushy.