Hi everyone, I just thought of sharing my bad experience with you so you don't have to go through the same thing that will spoilt your trip.
As you may know Paris is one of the best and exciting places to go and realize what an amazing city it is. However, it's really expensive specially accomodation. There are some alternatives to expensive hotels and for those of you with families or not really into backpackers, there are short-term rental apartments that really saves you money.
However, my worst experience was to book one of these apartments through NY Habitat, this company is based in NYC and they are an intermediary between the owner of the apartment and yourself. So you find accomodation through their database in their website and choose what you like, then they send you a contract and you have to pay an "agency fee" which usually would be the first night of accomodation, after that they send you the owner details and you then deal directly with the owner and even pay directly on your arrival.
I remember we were travelling on the 16 Sep 2007 right in the middle of Rugby Worldcup in France.
My bad experience was that 3 days before travelling to Paris, the owner send me an email to cancel the accomodation. This guy Antoine Chevolleau, apart from his bad memory and english (he kept calling me Jessica) just decided not to rent his apartment anymore even when there was a signed and paid formal contract. He did't provide any explanation. Well, my thoughts were that this person found a better deal and rented the premises to somebody else.
Of course I contacted NY Habitat agency, and I would have thought the reasonable way to proceed is to refund your money. Well, to my surprise, their policy is to find you another accomodation which is fair enough but the problem was that the "left overs" were really below standards. So their reaction was not to refund the agency fee due to the "troubles" they have been through in finding my accomodation.
Luckily, I paid the agency fee with an AMEX card. So I call this fabulous team and reported a fraudulent charge by NY Habitat. It was just a matter of sending them the contract and the written communication I had with the owner and they suspended the charge straight away.
It took a while to settle but I received a call yesterday from AMEX saying that finally the payment has been credited to my account due to NY Habitat inconsistency.
To end the story, as soon as I had the email from the owner, I looked at another accomodation and this gentleman Regis Maurin had the best deal. We only stay for 4 days but the location was great the apartment was newly renovated, so it was the best! we even had a small plasma tv with cable and internet for free! and compared to expensive hotels this one was even better than a junior suite!! He had every detail in control and I really appreciated that. I won't put his website here because of the advertisement policies but a big THANK YOU to Regis
I would appreciate your thoughts and comments on these one.
See you on the next one.
