We booked a one bedroom apartment for the weekend to attend the film festival where my fiancé’s movie was premiering. At around 4am on the first night, he woke up covered in bites - we quickly discovered bed bugs in and around the bed. After killing a few well-fed bugs and moving to the sofa bed, I immediately messaged the “24/7” customer service. It took them almost 4 hours to respond and all they initially offered was to send the cleaning team. We had to specifically ask to be moved to a different room and all they had available was a smaller, studio apartment. We had to wait another 3+ hours for them to prepare the new apartment during which time we spent nearly €20 washing all of our clothes to not spread the infestation farther. The studio apartment is priced about 6-7% lower than the one bedroom we had booked and we were only offered a 20% discount - on the second night only. As most hotels were already at capacity for the festival and we didn’t have other options, we accepted the discount but felt that comping at least one night was warranted (and told them as much). After all, the discount didn’t even cover the cost of our laundry. Bed bugs are something that can unfortunately happen, but the poor customer service is what truly made the stay bad. On the other hand, we noticed cobwebs in both rooms so maybe the cleaning isn’t as thorough as it should be. Also, the instructions for entry were really poor. The apartments are actually on 2 different streets and all have different addresses. The check-in instructions tell you your room number but not the actual address so when we used the general address from Booking, we went to the wrong street. It clearly happens all the time because someone that lives in the neighborhood saw us looking lost and helped direct us to our room. On the second night, someone actually rang our doorbell around 10pm as they couldn’t find their own room.
