Neighbourgood Ravenscraig

The location, environment, car park, and lovely cleaning staff were the positives. You might also get lucky and share a house with lots of like-minded digital nomads, which makes for a nice social atmosphere, though it’s unpredictable. After two months there, I feel I can give a fair review. There seemed to be a serious rat problem. Once, while we were eating at the table, a rat jumped out of the kitchen bin and nearly landed on my boyfriend’s shoulder. Rats were seen regularly, and a couple of us watched them drink from the pool at night. We reported it to the in-house staff, and another resident shared photos and/or videos with someone on the Neighbourgood team. A month later, nothing had changed. Our balcony door lock was broken when we arrived. It took three days to fix, and the room felt vulnerable in the meantime. For about the first week, there was extremely loud drilling from the roof whenever the water system wasn’t running. The temporary fix was to turn off the water at night. Wi-Fi was questionable for a place aimed at digital nomads: over my two-month stay, there were two working days when the internet was down or cutting in and out. The property also felt tired. There was mould in my bathroom, and repairs often seemed temporary. Our bathroom door handle fell off several times, once leaving me locked inside. I raised the problems repeatedly but was never offered compensation. I was offered a move to another property, but another resident described it as more like a hostel, which wasn’t suitable. The price was 30,900 rand per month, around £1,400 / €1,650 / $1,750. After I checked out, they raised an accounting issue because one monthly payment didn’t appear to have processed. I was waiting for confirmation from my boyfriend’s bank, but someone commented that if they couldn’t locate it, the amount might be deducted from an employee’s salary. That felt unreasonable. If there was a genuine payment error, we would of course resolve it, but for a place with 22 rooms charging these prices, I was surprised to hear staff might be held personally responsible for something that clearly wasn’t their fault. I wanted to share what happened so others know what to expect.

The team were friendly and helpful, and the location is good. Booking was frustrating, though, because I got no reply to three different emails. The place feels a bit worn: the kitchen floor has lifted, and there are no bins in the rooms, among other small things. That said, the rooms were clean and comfortable, and it was decent value for money. I’d consider going back.

SCAM. The rooms look nothing like the website photos. I went to see the room three days before I was supposed to move in, and it felt like a scam. I tried to cancel and get a refund for the one-month booking worth 2000 USD, but they wouldn’t allow it. Then, while I wasn’t moving in, they tried to rent the same room out a second time. UPDATE: No refund was made at all, despite the reply claiming “refunded 2nd October.” That’s a LIE!

We appreciated having a place to sit and get work done during our work trip, and the parking being inside was especially useful. The rooms were cleaned daily. Thanks for the hospitality, it suited us perfectly, and we’ll visit again in the near future.