Columbia Apartments

We booked three rooms for five people and assumed we'd all be together on the same level. Instead, two rooms were part of a three bedroom apartment shared with a tenant, so we had to share the kitchen, bathroom, and shower with a stranger. Our other room was six floors away and shared with other strangers. None of this was mentioned when we booked. The place was very dirty, and no refund was allowed.

The bathroom was the worst part. There was mould all over the place and rust on the shower curtain rail, so I didn’t even want to go in. I ended up buying Dettol from the convenience store downstairs and spraying the shower. That’s when I saw the same mould on the toilet. The microwave was also full of old food bits, probably left by the tenant next door. For the first two days, the water was off from 9am to 2pm. We had to shower at night or get up before 9, and buy drinking water. When we went to leave at 9:10am, nobody was downstairs. We had to drop the key in a box, and a sign said the $200 hold could take up to 10 working days to come back. Check-in was a hassle too. We arrived at 1:58pm and weren’t let in until exactly 2. After they buzzed us in, I asked about the room and parking. The staff member said we hadn’t booked parking and that public spaces were full. I explained the Booking.com deal included a car for the weekend, but after 20 minutes of being told I was stupid, I left and found parking 200 metres up the road. It cost $32 a day. Then I was told they’d put a $200 hold on my card for the room key, which hadn’t been mentioned on the website. The room itself wasn’t too bad, but it was tiny, especially the kitchen, which was smaller than a caravan kitchen. The bed was old and lumpy, and the pillows were worse, though I’ve slept on worse. There weren’t any bins on site or instructions about where to take rubbish. We used old bags and left them on the bedroom table. The hallway was very tight while we waited for the lift. DO NOT STAY HERE. AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

Health and safety problems everywhere, and the staff were unprofessional. If zero stars were an option, I’d give that.

The location was convenient for the university, but the state of the room was awful. Everything seemed dirty, cracked, rusty or mouldy, and there was a bad smell. At check-in they wanted a $200 bond even though I’d already paid for the room. They said it would come back through the bank in ten days, or sooner at checkout if I wrote down my credit card details for them. That seemed like a scam. I’d booked a “two bedroom apartment,” but it was actually two of the three bedrooms in an apartment. I’m not sure whether they rent the third room to somebody else at the same time.