'Getting very annoyed'

Dear Berlin Visiter,

Although Room with a Loo offers a great variety of rooms and apartments they are not reliable and their service is extremely poor. We therefore would not recommend this accomodation agency. This judgment is based on our experience in the Christmas holiday 2005/2006.

We booked an apartment on the website www.roomwithaloo.com and after some phone calls and email correspondences received a contract on which the date, the address and the price of the place were set out. In the email, Room with a Loo told us that Ioana Veleanu was expecting us at the apartment on Saturday 31st of December at 17:00 PM. In case we were not able to manage the appointed time we were kindly requested to contact her on her mobile phone.

Due to the bad weather conditions we had some delay during our journey and tried to phone Mrs. Veleanu. However we instantly received the message from her network provider that her phone was switched off. We tried several times, send sms', emailed from an Internet café and tried to contact her at her office but she didn't respond. Moreover, once we arrived in Berlin no one was welcoming us at the apartment and there was no message left.

Since it was New Years Eve and already late we had a terrible quest in finding an alternative place to stay. Especially since one of us had become ill.

Eventually Sunday evening, as late as 21.00 pm, Room with a Loo did contact us on our mobile and asked if we were already in Berlin and why we didn't call. We proposed to come down to their office at the Jablonskistrasse 3 the next day to settle down the issue.

The next morning we received a warm welcome at Room with a Loo and Mrs. Veleanu apologized immediately. She told us that her colleague didn't inform her adequately about our arriving time and that she didn't know that she was expected to welcome us at the appointed address. (The contract and our email correspondence were however very clear about the arrival date and the role of Mrs Veleanu). When we asked her why we couldn't reach her on Saturday she was beating around the bush and left us with no convincing explanation. (Was her network indeed down as she proclaimed or was the phone switched off as her network provider stated? The fact that we were able to reach other German phone-connections on Saturday, made us doubt her story.).

The coffee at the Jablonskistrasse was fine but we felt uncomfortable about the extra costs we had made to find an alternative sleeping place on Saturday. However, when we asked what her opinion was about the matter she told us that she could only compensate us by refunding the commission of 50 euros, which was the mediation charge for the apartment. The conversation did not result in a satisfactory solution. Mrs Veleany blaimed her network provider for our inconvenience and told us that she "was getting annoyed" that we did not accept her offer. In our opinion the assumed disfunctioning network was irrelevant since we were the customer of Mrs Veleany and her only and she failed to be at the address at the appointed time as agreed in the email.

Eventually she suggested that we would settle the dispute later and asked us to have a look at the apartment first (Another apartment however than we originally booked since the first one appeared to be situated directly above a noisy café).

Soon after leaving the office she phoned us and made clear that she would not give us any compensation but the waiver for the commission. "She had done all she could, she had offered an alternative apartment, so she was nor obliged to pay anything". We told her that in that case we would take the first apartment and receive the refund. But instead of considering that option she told us that she "was now getting very annoyed". The tone of the conversation roughened and we were left with no option but to hang up.

Although the remaining days in Berlin were extraordinary, our predominant souvenir was a bad odour of Rooms with a Loo. And unless you do want a Loo with no Room, and to 'get very annoyed' book an apartment at one of the numerous alternative agenies.

Oberon and Tamara from Amsterdam