Hi there,
On booking.com there was a tourist apartment building in the Barranco area called By Simply Confort and they looked beautiful in the photos. As the apartments only came with one desk and didn’t even had a dining table, I asked if they could put an additional one and they said no. Also, I read several negative reviews regarding internet speed and noise, so we ruled it out. The one-bedroom apartments were around $1500 per month and they charged you about $400 extra in taxes. Due to covid restrictions, there was also no access to common areas such as pool and gym.
Of all those I contacted through Airbnb, the one I liked the most was a brand-new apartment (without reviews) since the hostess had responded well to me and had confirmed that she could put an additional desk for us.
It is scary to rent an apartment that has no reviews but knowing that Airbnb has a habit of deleting bad reviews, in the end you are left the same.
Just before our arrival, they had a reservation for 5 nights.
The arrival and check-in information were perfect. It is a large and new building that even Google Maps did not show.
As you can imagine, the first failure was cleaning. I immediately sent the photos to the hostess and the following days we found several more things: dirty blender, dirty dishes, snot stuck to the wall, etc,. It is incredible the destruction that the previous host had caused in so few days. In addition, the failure of the hostess of not checking every millimeter of the apartment.
The washing machine was malfunctioning and that is because it had not been installed correctly. The next day the technician came and explained to us that they had not removed the safety parts that are placed to transport the washing machine and that miraculously it was not damaged.
The first week we decided to spend one more month in Lima since we did not find good accommodations in the other cities where we wanted to base ourselves. So, I started contacting the hosts of all the accommodations that I had liked to visit them and decide if we should stay where we were or go somewhere else.
I was impressed that several people did not want to show us the accommodation because they “followed Airbnb’s rules“, I don’t know if it’s out of ignorance or fear. In Europe, everyone prefers to show you the apartment and agree on the rental outside of Airbnb; you get a better price since neither of the two parties pays Airbnb fees and the host won’t probably pay taxes for that money.
After visiting some accommodations, we decided to stay where we were because we couldn’t find any newer apartments and because they gave us a two-night discount for the second month.
The worst thing about the apartment is that it was on a main avenue that had a lot of traffic all day. After the third night without being able to sleep, we placed the two single mattresses from the small room in the window of our room to try to get better soundproof. Like that, we could sleep relatively well with earplugs.
When we were in the apartment for a month, the neighbors upstairs started having parties every weekend and their dog started barking all day long. Imagine the nightmare.
When we returned from Cusco, we moved the individual mattresses to the room where we worked since there we couldn’t even sleep anymore with the parties and the dog. So, in a single room was the work area and our bed.
The last two weeks we spent there we were going crazy. The situation was surreal: firefighters and ambulances always passing by, cars honking horns, several car alarms sounding at the same time throughout the day, construction noise, etc. I am not exaggerating.
With two weeks to go until checkout, the water heater blew up and luckily, we weren’t around, because we would have ended up in the hospital or dead. Diego received a small electric shock trying to turn it off. The hospitality had been good, but the handling of the incident was unfortunate as none of the hostesses showed up to see what had happened or apologize. We spent 5 days receiving technicians when it should have been the hostess who took care of the matter. Airbnb gave me $449 in compensation which is a pittance when you think about what could have happened.
I summarize by points:
Pros
- Excellent internet of 150 Mbps.
- Many amenities: soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes, cleaning products, water, soft drinks, snacks.
- Hospitality. It was good until the incident with the water heater.
- 24-hour security.
- Nice decoration that made the accommodation feel like a home.
- Well equipped kitchen for long stays.
- New apartment so you do not find the typical problems of those accommodations that are already old and neglected.
Cons
- Extremely noisy to the point that I don’t understand how the rest of the residents were able to put up with this nightmare of noise that didn’t even stop on weekends.
- Many cleaning failures.
- Although the location was not bad because Lince is one of the best areas in Lima, we would have preferred to be in Barranco or Miraflores with access to a large park or a promenade to run and exercise.
- Poor quality mattress and pillows. Although everything was new, the mattress, pillows and sheets were of poor quality.
- You could only use the gym 3 hours a week.
The first month cost us $1230 and the second it was $1015. With its faults, it is the best accommodation and the “cheapest” in which we had been since November 2021. In addition, it was a respite after spending 3 months in dirty accommodations that were falling apart and with lousy hosts.
In the review I gave it 4 stars overall and 3 stars for cleanliness, and I based the evaluation on the horrible experiences we’ve had and that this was “the best thing” we had come across in a long time. If I had made the evaluation based on what a normal tourist accommodation should be like (and taking in consideration the unsafety of the water heater), I would have given it 1 star.
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