Old Street by Excel Apartments

Please avoid booking this apartment. I booked months ahead, then they told me an hour before my agreed early check-in that I couldn’t go to the property and they were cancelling my booking. I’d spent all morning calling customer service for entry details and was ignored. Then came an email just an hour before I was due to arrive. That’s disgusting, and has really shaken my faith in customer service trading standards. They called asking me to cancel from my end so they could issue a refund. Don’t trust that. They later said they wouldn’t refund me after all, despite promising to, and caused me serious financial and emotional hardship on my birthday. I’ll take the complaint further. This is a scam, a complete false misrepresentation. This isn’t a fake review. I’ve attached my booking confirmation 😚. You know full well who I am and that you’ve scammed me out of hundreds of pounds. I attached the confirmation with you. If I got a refund, I’d consider taking down our reviews, but you’ve been unreasonable from the start, so other potential customers should know too. Your loss love x

The bed was the worst part of our stay. The mattress was a nightmare, so we ended up on the couch, which was also very uncomfortable, just a little better. The glass bathroom door stuck badly and was hard to open or close. Sound insulation was almost nonexistent too. We could hear even someone walking in the stairwell loudly inside the room, though that didn’t bother me too much personally. The only good thing was the accommodation’s location. I also don’t think the deposit requirement is fair. I hadn’t seen it mentioned beforehand, and around 370 EUR is a lot to be confronted with just before a vacation. The information comes after you’ve paid for the booking, when there’s basically no way around it. What is it even for? Other places I’ve stayed have managed rentals without one. The renter is legally responsible anyway, so they can be held accountable if needed. It feels a bit ridiculous.

SCAMMERS!! They cancelled our stay on the morning we were meant to arrive, then made us cancel it ourselves so they could avoid refunding nearly £1000 for the 2 apartments we’d paid for. They completely ruined what was meant to be a very special trip. DO NOT book!!! EDIT: This is not a fake review. The rooms were under my friend’s name, so you wouldn’t find me in your system. You even replied to her review pretending you couldn’t find her name. Lying to make yourself look good makes it worse. We’re taking this further. I attached photos as proof of what happened, so you can’t tell other people we’re lying 😊

The location is really handy. It’s a 5-minute walk to places to eat and shops, and 20 minutes on foot to Liverpool street station, with other stations like old street closer. That’s about the main positive, though. I can’t really recommend the place. It wasn’t a complete disaster, just lots of annoying things piling up. There were no sponges or anything for cleaning, so I had to buy some to wash dishes and wipe surfaces. The dishwasher only got the dishes wet and didn’t actually clean them. There was no tea towel to dry them either. We also found stains on the sofa that hadn’t been disclosed, flaking wallpaper or paint in the bathroom, and yellow stains on the bed under the sheets. I felt like these things were waiting to be used to take money out of the £100 deposit, though the sofa stain itself wasn’t a problem to me. The panel below the oven fell off on my first night, which gave me the same feeling. Some basic kitchen items were missing too: no oven tray, though an all-metal frying pan worked as a substitute, and no oven gloves. I used a hand towel, which wasn’t the worst, but there wasn’t a tea towel either. The blinds barely did anything, so the bedroom was genuinely bright even at midnight. A minor thing, but the sheets didn’t fit the duvet and bunched up in places. You know how it is. The biggest problem was the power tripping when we used the oven and hob at the same time. I tried to film it but couldn’t reproduce it on the morning we left. There was a fuse box and circuit breaker, so it wasn’t the end of the world, but it made even simple cooking a real hassle.