Palazzo Murat by Wonderful Italy

Three stars because the bedsheet was untidy, the toilet lid and cover were broken, and one bathroom light didn't work. The light that did work made a very loud noise.

The stay was pretty good, but our late-night check-in got off to a bad start. The pin we were given wouldn't let us into the property, and we spent more than half an hour on the phone with support before they provided a replacement.

This whole stay was a disgrace. Neither company has apologized, and they seemed to care only when payment was at risk, not when we might be left on the street. I would never recommend Booking.com or Wonderful Italy again. They showed no concern for our wellbeing. We booked through Booking.com, but Wonderful Italy runs the building and handled online check-in. We completed it the day before arrival and had both access codes in advance. When we arrived at 21:05, we couldn't get into the building. Their website and WhatsApp messages said they could be reached from 09:00 to 23:00, but nobody answered. I eventually got inside and went to the room we thought was ours, only to find a couple already staying there. My partner and I spent 90 minutes trying to reach Booking.com and Wonderful Italy, with no answer. We then spent more than two hours rushing around Bari to find another hotel. We found one, but it cost extra, and we haven't been reimbursed or compensated. We were lucky not to end up sleeping outside. We couldn't reach Wonderful Italy until around 11:30 the next day. They said an administrative error had moved our booking back by a day, even though it had been correctly booked for weeks, which explained why the codes didn't work. They promised to have the room ready at 15:00 instead of the usual 16:00 to make up for the disruption. We arrived at 15:10, but the cleaning staff hadn't been told to hurry. The room wasn't ready until 17:00, so we lost another day dragging all our luggage around. Booking.com didn't reply until three and a half days after the mess began, and only made things worse. On the second-to-last day, Wonderful Italy called to say Booking.com had cancelled the reservation, so they weren't being paid. We were told to pay the full amount we'd already paid Booking.com all over again to stay for our final 24 hours, or we'd be locked out and made to leave. Funny how quickly they got in touch as soon as they thought they might not be paid. Federica was very pushy and refused to speak with Booking.com, leaving us to deal with them ourselves. After two hours, Booking.com confirmed the cancellation and said we'd be refunded, but that could take up to 12 days. We asked them to reinstate the booking so we wouldn't be forced out, but they said their system wouldn't allow it. Almost a week later, I still haven't received the money. We had to pay Wonderful Italy directly for the full reservation, at a higher rate than our Booking.com price because we'd had a discount there. We also asked to keep the room for a couple of extra hours on checkout day, especially after the first two days, when the room wasn't even cleaned and ready by check-in time. They said keeping it would cost a full day's fee. This was the same room we hadn't been able to check into properly until 17:00 after it was finally cleaned. Wonderful Italy's customer service was awful and aggressive: pay, or you're locked out. I'm about £2,000 out of pocket. We paid for the reservation a second time at a higher price, had international conversion fees, paid for another, more expensive room, and ran up huge phone bills making hours of international calls to fix a mess that wasn't our fault. That doesn't include compensation for the stress or at least two days of our holiday lost to sorting this out.

A great apartment, very comfortable and well equipped.