Madrid: SpainSelect apartment

Hola

We went to Seville in September and enjoyed it so much (yes, really!) that we're going back to Spain for Christmas. This time: Madrid.

I've found the PERFECT apartment in Madrid, using SpainSelect agency.

Their emails are intermittent, to put it mildly. I put the apartment on hold while I researched air tickets and they replied to that email (but it does not show On-Hold on their website). Now, I've booked my air tickets and with relief emailed SpainSelect again saying BOOKED! Tell us how to PAY YOU!

No response so far.

Should I worry about their slow responses at every stage of the process? Please say no.

Thanks, Striped

How much time passes from your email to their response? I'd say 4 days is borderline "too long" for a response. So no, I wouldn't worry about a slow response. They probably only have 1 or 2 people managing the reservations. These kinds of businesses are usually pretty small and completely run out of a one-room office. I don't know in the case of SpainSelect but many are like this.

Saludos, MadridMan

Being involved in the accommodation business myself, I do think it's very bad business not to reply asap to customer queries !!

They have a customer service email address and a phone number on the website.

Personally I'd give them a couple of days then email again ( always request a "read receipt"). If you don't hear by email, phone them.

I've had a reply now, it is a list of instructions.

I'll comply later or even tomorrow.

I must say it's not very friendly. I've rented apartments all over the world from USA (several in different States) through to Australia. This one has no "thank you for booking with us" or "we look forward to meeting you" or "Hope you have a good Christmas in Madrid" - little personal touches like that: just a list of instructions.

Oh well. I read elsewhere that Madrid people are reserved. I just hope we have a better apartment rental experience than we had in Seville in September.

Madrid people are certainly not reserved when they´re out and about . They seriously like to , and feel it´s their god-given right to PARTY . But in terms of business thay have some way to go . And even small things like : I´ve been brought up to hold the door open for a lady , or somebody elderley etc... In the UK i always get a "thank you" .. Here in Madrid .. almost never .
Recently , I went to buy a digital SLR camera .. 650 Euros on average .. I went into the main store here in Madrid and quite frankly they couldn´t be bothered talking to me ( And I had a Basque friend with me ) .. And they had zero idea of the product . I ended up buying it for the same price in a local , independent store .
Madrileños can seem a bit rude ( against other European nations perceptions ) But once you get under their skin you´ll find they´re fantastic people with a real joy and zest for life .
In terms o business and bureaucracy it a whole case of the "mañana" thing ... Things will be done eventually but don´t expect it to be done on time jejejejejeje .

I always thank the friendly people, I think we educated

No offense whatsoever intended, StripedShirt, but I had to chuckle just a bit when I read this. I think this must fall into the "This is Spain" category.

A Spanish friend & I were talking on this very topic just yesterday. She says that it's just not in their culture to include these "Please" and "Thank you" details while communicating either by email or face-to-face. It does happen, but rarely. She said, in this regard, she prefers the manners of the USA, Britain, & Australia. Spaniards don't mean to be rude, of course not, but it's just not their way. (speaking generally) Among Spaniards, it's just-the-way-it-is and nothing negative at all. So don't take it personally.

One culture's norms may be another culture's oddity. - Quote by MadridMan

Hi MadridMan

I phoned them up today, some minor detail about actually paying for the apartment. The phone was answered immediately and in English. It sounds like a busy office. My needs were dealt with in a businesslike manner: briskly. Not friendly, but efficiently enough.

I admit to being somewhat disconcerted. There was no "Hallo Striped!" I had to add that myself to get a "Hi!" out of them. It seemed somewhat robotic, tbh. I get a friendlier response from my ISP or my mobile phone company or my bank, but it's ok I am not taking it personally.

There is a vague memory which springs to mind now: Paris. Parisians are rather haughty too, and famous for it.

Hopefully when we meet one of these people in person to get the keys, he/she will be friendlier in real life. Having said that I don't care much as long as the flight's on time, the greeter is on time and the apartment is exactly as I am expecting and stays that way. What else would one want?

As my last note to this thread !! ( probably ) ... I have also hired apartments and suites around the world . My best experience was in South Africa ( Cape Town ) and the owners could not have been more friendly and accomodating ( mind you , I was paying a lot of money ! ) .. In Miami , they were incredibly friendly .. but in NYC mmmm I´ve been to New York City many times but normally in hotels . The last time I went was for thanksgiving and me and a friend hired an apartment downtown , in Bleeker Street .
On arriving , the East European doorman said he knew nothing about the booking and no keys were available .. his English wasn´t good .. but we had a print out of our reservation !!!
My friend and I went to a nearby diner , with our luggage and got something to eat and to discuss what to do next .
An hour or so later we went back to the apartment block and the guy said .. Oh , yes , I found the envelope with the keys .. 3rd floor please .
We had a great 2 weeks in NYC , as usual , but like most cities ( including Madrid and my home city of London ) , there can be annoying complications .

Sometimes you're better off when these situations are somewhat impersonal. I like it best when I rent an apartment, and I never meet or see the owner who is perhaps living abroad.

I rented one apartment in Buenos Aires owned by a woman who sent her housekeeper to spy on me because she seemed to be uncomfortable about having a woman on her own renting her place.

The housekeeper was supposed to come in and clean once a week at a set time, but she let herself in at 6 or 7 am and would walk into the bedroom while I was still sleeping to supposedly drop off towels or other nonsense. It was just so intrusive.

Give me an impersonal rental agency anytime. As long as they set things up efficiently, I don't need them to be friendly.

Holy Mackerel, Donna!

Can we display images here?

StripedShirt, you can display images here if they're already hosted on some server. Just click the button below which says "Switch to Full Reply Screen", then click the button (4th button from the left) which, when hovering over it says "Enter an image", then enter the direct URL to that image.



Saludos, MadridMan

Good

Would you mind if I put up the images of my dire Seville apartment? I can't get TA to display them for various bureaucratic reasons (like, I don't own the apartment; it's not a review of a Seville attraction, it's not an hotel etc etc)

Sure! Post your photos if you like as long as they're already "housed" on a server to which you can directly link to the photos.

Saludos, MadridMan

Great, thanks MadridMan.

All over internet travel forums you see people asking about apartment rentals, and can the photos posted by letting agencies be trusted? Now I know that in this case their photos can be trusted, as long as you look at the place from exactly the same camera angle and at exactly the same time of day, and don't look sideways, up or down, try to operate the applicances or actually try to live there in the case of this one, in Seville, in September this year.

The kitchen sink: I took this photo after removing a dishcloth which had been draped over it....



Refridgerator interior (not the freezer, the fridge), which froze all the liquids solid overnight...



The view from the one and only window ......



The "internal patio" i.e., a well, and the reason why the whole apartment smelled of damp......



Unfinished wiring in the bathroom.....



More unfinished wiring in the sitting room.....



The ironing board.....



Yes I did tell them. No they were not interested.

Some people go through life saying "It's All Right Really, we're only here for a few days, don't make any fuss". I'm not an It's All Right Really person but that don't make me one of life's Complainers with a capital C either.

If no-one says anything, nothing gets fixed and everyone goes around in a state of blissful ignorance (the apartment rental agency in this case) or in dashed expectations (the previous and subsequent renters of this apartment).

People should take photographs and post them if disappointed with the reality and dissatisfied with the total indifference of response. People SHOULD complain more! They are doing everyone else a service!

-------

I'm sure my Madrid apartment in December will yield only wonderful photos of everything being exactly as depicted on the website.

OH--MY--GAWD. That's just awful! Just goes to show that people will try to get away with "selling" anything. I'm sure the agency's photos of this same apartment were just wonderful, though, smartly avoiding the patio and unfinished wiring. My "favorite" photo was the wiring holding the bare, dangling low-consumption light bulb on the wall.

Thanks for posting your photos, StripedShirt. Not sure why "the system" forced you to post them twice unless it took a moment for them to be "extracted" from Flickr.

Saludos, MadridMan

Again, should I worry?

15th November I emailed them asking for a later check-out than 10 am. I can see from their bookings screen that no-one is coming in the day we leave, so a 10am check-out seems rather stringent. They've got three whole days to clean the place, i.e., change the beds and empty the wastebins.

There was no reply, so 21st November I emailed the boss saying very mildly that there was no panic, but some sort of clarification would be nice.

Again, no reply. Yet.

They're not a two-man outfit, MadridMan. When I had to call them last month about some detail about payment, it was a busy bustling office.

Hmmmmm...... I sure hope everything's ok in their world. I'm really looking forward to this Christmas trip, not least because we're going to meet some nice people there!

I´ve stayed , like MM , in hotels and hostales across Spain and Portugal and some of them , frankly , do not have a sense of business . In London , I always ask for a late check out ( maybe midday ) and I always get it without extra charge . Here in Madrid it can be more difficult . They will allow you to leave luggage behind the desk but wil often not accept a late check out . The cleaners all have a schedule and that´s it ! I would keep calling them though .. maybe on the phone and demand an answer to your question . Whatever happens , you´ll have a great time in Madrid !
Oh and I only just saw the pictures you uploaded of your last accommodation . Man , that was horrible ..! I hope all goes well for you this time .

My Seville apartment rental with Sevilla 5 worked out reasonably well. I paid 320 Euros for the whole 7 days, and I wasn't expecting much. When the apartment turned out to be halfway decent, I was happy. It was Arfe 4 a small duplex apartment that housed a rather quirky art collection in the Arenal area.

The woman who came to check me in from Sevilla 5 spoke no English, but I suppose they correctly assumed from my Spanish surname that it wasn't necessary. She brought me an internet modem I had requested that worked very well.

On the wall in the kitched was some kind of big tank. When I turned on the hot water in the sink you could see a roaring fire blazing in a window of this tank. When I turned off the hot water, it would stop. I never saw such a thing in any apartment I rented in Europe or South America. What was that? A kind of gas heater?

I emailed a request for a later checkout due to a flight change caused by those Iberia strikes, and Manuela fron Sevilla 5 was very cooperative and said I could stay as late as I needed to.

I would use Sevilla 5 again, but I can understand why Striped Shirt was unhappy after seeing those photos.

That tank would have been a gas boiler unit . They are very common in Europe . I have one in my apartment and always had them when I owned property in England .

Still no reply to my email sent on Saturday 21st November - nor to the one sent on the 15th.

I'm now kinda perplexed. I run a business and always reply to paying customers within 24 hours unless I'm actually not here. But I have no back-up and they have plenty of staff.

What to do? Just go uh-huh and wait some more, or (sigh) phone Spain and appear to be a very impatient possibly mad English person? Which I'm not. I just want someone to reply to me!

Steve, thanks for enlightening me on what the gas boiler is all about. The two rental apartments I had in Paris didn't have this.

Do they ever explode or anything like that?

Donna, Hi

Gas boilers don't explode if they did, they wouldn't install them. We've got a gas boiler at home but admittedly not over the sink.

Regarding the non-English speaking person who checked you in, that would be Maria, yes? And I can see your line of thought that with a Spanish surname there was no need to supply an English speaker........but I have a Polish surname yet I speak no Polish. Maria came along and ranted at me in Spanish then rolled her eyes, sighed heavily, phoned someone else and shouted in Spanish down the phone, then slammed out of the apartment. Nice lady, REALLY GOOD for customer-relations, I thought.

While you're there, you said the apartment was half-decent. What were the half-not-decent parts? Do tell.

It's a relief to know that gas boilers don't explode. I was worried about that.

I didn't get the name of the woman who checked me in. She was a woman of late middle age wearing tight jeans. I kind of got the impression that she worked for the building rather than for Sevilla 5, because I saw her opening closets in the hallways where cleaning supplies were kept.

In the United States people tend to expect those with Spanish surnames to speak Spanish. Spanish is much more of an important world language than Polish. People here don't expect those with Polish names to speak Polish.

Perhaps it's because most of the Latin American immigrants raise their children to speak both Spanish and English with varying degrees of success.

The European immigrants tended not to keep the language of the old country. Many of them had such problems themselves trying to learn English well enough to get jobs and fit in with American life that their main concern was raising their children to speak English without a foreign accent. Nobody was traveling much in those days, so they didn't consider that it would be nice if their children could speak both languages. They did what seemed right for them at the time.

As for what was wrong with the apartment, there wasn't much of importance. I felt I got good value for what I paid. There were a lot of burned out lightbulbs. Usually I'd just go out and buy new ones, but these had a different size from the normal standard socket, and I didn't want to mess with strange electricity, so I just used the ones that worked. The bed sheets and blankets although clean were rather old and shabby and should be replaced. The television set was very small. I didn't bother with it much, but a woman in the next apartment claimed hers got only a few channels and asked me to try to fix it.

All in all, it was actually better than I anticipated, you don't get much apartment for your dollars in Europe these days, so I have no really serious complaints.

Next year I'll go to Buenos Aires and live in luxury.

That'd be Maria. She opened closets in our apartment where linen was kept and locked them again. She's the multi-purpose greeter and very impatient cleaning lady.





You'd BUY new lightbulbs yourself? Why? Doesn't a lot of burned out lightbulbs speak of poor housekeeping? Doesn't that tell you that no one inspects the place and that no one has reported dud lightbulbs? (Including you?) Why on earth should paying customers also be somehow expected to replace lightbulbs?

Definition of Professionalism: Constant Attention To Detail.




Exactly. (see previous paragraph)



Don't agree! You can get a lovely apartment, with attention to details, in Europe. My last one in October in France, the owners could not have been more helpful, kind, friendly, and eager to please.

BTW, where's MadridMan these days? Something I said?

You're right, of course, about the lightbulbs. The lighting was adequate with what was working, although it would have been better if they all worked. Most of my past apartment rentals have been in Argentina where light bulbs cost a few pennies, so I never thought twice about replacing them. On second thought, the ones that burned out there happened in the middle of a long stay. That's a lot less irritating than just arriving and finding them not working.

I know there are lots of nice apartments in France. I stayed in two of them earlier in the year. However, they were much more expensive than this one. I dealt with a company called Special Apartments. The apartment I rented was a small relatively inexpensive one. A few days after my arrival, the shower leaked into the apartment below. They then upgraded me to a much more expensive apartment for the rest of my stay. It was really nice to spend most of my vacation getting more than I was paying for. Having been in the travel business myself, I know that it's not what goes wrong, but how it's handled and made right.

On their website, Sevilla 5 shows all the people who work there and boasts about all the foreign languages each one speaks. That being the case, I wonder why one of those people can't get themselves over to the apartments to greet foreign clients. Leaving that poor cleaning woman to do it is not fair to the guests or to her. There's no reason a Spanish cleaning woman should be expected to know all the languages of the world.

Hi Donna

Regarding languages, did you know (I wrote about it on TA) that in the Seville apartment there was a washing machine. Not the dishwasher, the laundry washer. This machine was completely brand new and very complicated indeed - I think it was a washer/dryer combination. I examined it for ages then decided not to try to fathom it out and washed some shirts by hand in the bathroom sink.

Why? Because the handbook was in the following languages:

Italian, Finnish, Polish, and Rumanian.

I have no reason to make this up!

I'm not surprised it was completely brand new: no one else had worked out how to work it. In a holiday apartment in Spain, how many Italians, Finns, Poles and Rumanians do you think rent the place? Hardly any, I'd have thought. I would have thought that the vast majority of renters were English speaking (from UK, USA, Australia, Canada); or French or German or even Spanish.

Ho hum. Yet another aspect of their lack of attention to detail, which would keep the punters happy.

BTW, when I reported all to the agency they were not interested. The only thing they replied to was regarding the coffee machine spewing boiling water everywhere; they said they already knew about that.