Fantastic apartment in Coimbra

Staying at this apartment was not a good experience for us. First the apartment is way to cold in winter for not having heating devices to warm the spaces. It is a very recent renovation of an old building where the original walls were fully cover with plasterboard, I think that there's a space between the original walls and the new ones where humidity get trapped and that make it a very cold space. To deal with that cold, we have to asked the host, Amelia, to give us a portable heater. Also mold forms in the bathroom roof and even in your backpacks. The floor is so cold that if you walk only with winter socks you feel your feet not only cold but wet. To add, the apartment and everything inside is almost new, but some of the appliances were like toys or decoration, like not intended to be used, if you used them they last for very few times. As the toaster and hand blender that were very cheap and of low quality ("perfectly enough" average of 12.99€).
I will highly recommend the host, Amelia, to spend at least a week on that apartment during the winter season and while raining to really live and experiences what she, at this very moment, can only just see.
In addition to the apartment itself, it was not a good experience for me to comunicate with Amelia Estevao. During our stay there were 4 services usually provided by a host to it's guest and that could had being done very easily, but for one reason or another, Amelia make each of those processes difficult and time consuming for me. I wonder why she did them that way. The services were:
1) Extend the rent period.
2) Payment of services in excess
3) Inspection of the apartment and writing of the protocol from takeover of residential premises.
4) Keys pick-up
The first one, I want to write about is the Inspection of the apartment, the first time I asked Amelia to tell me when she was going to come to make the inspection of the apartment was 17 days before my check-out date and I asked her again 6 days before my check-out date. It took her 12 days to answered that to me. She wrote to me that she was not coming to make the inspection but that her husband is coming the day of the check-out. If she was not coming to make the inspection it means there's no way that there will be agreements between she and me about the way to solve defects and therefore the conditions needed to write down The Protocol from Takeover of Residential Premises were not met. I think they'd don't realized that, because her husband asked me, on the check-out day, to sign a document previously written by them. That is not what "The Protocol from Takeover of Residential Premises" is it all about, it cannot be written unilaterally by the host on his own an previous to the inspection.
Knowing she was not coming to the inspection and knowing I will have to correct the defects before I left. I decided to bought a new toaster and a new, exactly the same, hand blender. The ones on the apartment just stop working from one day to the next. I also bought a new, exactly the same, chopping board. I accidentally put a too hot pan in top of it and even it still works it's purpose perfectly it ends up with a black (burn) circle, so it doesn't look "as new", anymore. I consider I did the best I could to solve the defects, when the host, Amelia, didn't even take the time to come and check her own apartment.
Regarding the keys pick-up, she asked me if her husband could pick-up the keys at 9:00 am when the check-out time was at 11:00 am. We really tried to have everything ready at 9:00 am but we run a little bit late. Her husband was hurrying us when we have the right to be there until 11:00 am. We asked him to go inside the apartment some minutes after 9 am. I gave to him the new toaster, the new hand blender and the new chopping board. I also turn on many of the appliances and invite him to see that they were functioning properly (TV, router, refrigerator, stove, water heater, etc), but he seem not too interested and said to be in a hurry. He was there for about 20 minutes and take a very good look of the apartment. Since they have already booked the apartment by new guests to check-inn the next day, it was the opportunity for him to check the apartment and show me any defect he could found. He left the apartment without mentioning that he found any defect on the apartment. For last, he told us to left the apartment before 11:00 am. so he didn't pick up the keys. We left the apartment minutes after he left, the time that took to take videos/pictures and after finding out the code for the key-box.
Regarding the payment of services in excess Amelia notify me that I have to pay for them 12 days after she received the electricity invoice. I would like for her to notify it earlier so we can do something about it sooner. She add that our use of electricity was to high, I consider she told me so because she didn't took on account the following facts:
• The price for electricity was 17.611% higher in December than in January, that's written on the invoice. I think she has to know that fact, since she lives there, but she forgot to mentioned it to me.
• We were using a portable heater that she bought that don't have a label of energy efficiency and probably was not very efficient using electricity.
• The water heater was at the maximum temperature and the refrigerator was at the minimum temperature when we get there.
• Last but not least, it was December, a month of celebrations, we celebrate Christmas and the New Year, so we cooked (used the oven more than usual), hear music, go to sleep later, etc. It is not that we, the person's that rent Amelia's apartment's used to much electricity, is that all over the world people use more electricity in December.
I really tried to agreed with Amelia, on the amount to pay for services in excess. So I wrote several message to her for 17 days to get to a number and it was far to difficult:
• Begining with the rents I payed, the only thing she has to do is to copy them from the Amendment and sum them. But she didn't, she kept on writing to me wrong rents payments, always lower than what I really payed.
• Then, I asked Amelia questions about the services as: Do this apartment shared the same internet with the other apartment upstairs? (she owns that apartment too) That simple question offended her.
• Then, getting the invoices, she only send 2 invoices that were real invoices and that the whole period of time they were charging were when I was actually renting de apartment; 1 electricity invoice and 1 water invoices, their sum didn't exceed the maximum stablish by Flatio. I wrote several messages to Amelia to asked her to send the internet invoices but she never send a real internet invoice, just sent a screenshot of an e-mail from her internet provider.
• And for last with some invoices it is necessary to agreed on how much of the charge was really used by us as tenants; For example, that screenshot of an e-mail from her internet provider was asking for the payment of 52.81€ for 30 days. We were not renting the apartment jet, for 25 of those 30 days. The same happened with a water invoice that she sent to me, we were not renting the apartment for 13 days of the 30 days that invoice was charging.
One night at 01:24 am, she wrote to me this: "As despesas ficam por minha conta." Then, the same day few hours later 22:53, she wrote something that made no sense to me, so I asked her some questions to try to understand it, she just didn't answer them. She never send an invoice or mention anything about the payment for the services in excess anymore. What I can say is that, according to the meters, at the end of our stay we manage to lower 34% our electricity consumption and manage to lower 23% water consumption in relation to the December invoices.
The last service I will mention is when I asked her to extend my stay, it took her about 4 days for her to register a valid agreed amendment at Flatio's Website. First she create one with a Rent that was almost twice the price of the Rent I had already payed. Then she create another that extend my stay for 2 years more than I was asking and with the same doubled wrong price.
Repeatedly, Amelia was not involved in the service she has to give to us and she was not willing to accomplish each of them, also her communication with me was erratic and it became a bad experience for me.

Sousedství
Is an old very beautiful neighborhood with all kind of shops, restaurants, places to visit and all you need at walking distance. The overall appearance of the neighborhood will improved if something could be done about a lot of abandoned buildings scattered in all the streets. In general people are respectful, kind and willing to help but there's always someone that is exactly the opposite. I can tell they like music a lot there's always someone playing an instrument and/or singing in the streets and you will always hear them when you open your windows.

Doporučená místa v okolí
Sunsets near the river.

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Excellent apartment in great location in Coimbra.