Accommodation in Paris

[Cocitus23]

I am in the middle of booking a week's accommodation in Paris for a family vacation this June. I was referred to a web site paristay dot com, which seems excellent at first glance, offering a great array of apartments for short term lease, well-located with a real variety of prices to choose from. But their process has me tearing my hair out. Nothing as simple as "Seven nights cost X Euros. Send us your credit card number and we'll confirm your booking." No, there are multi-page contracts to initial and fax back, passport details to be faxed, separate payments to the agent and to the owner, separate payment for cleaning, an amount to cover bank charges, obligatory insurance to cover damage, a security deposit equal to a week's rent, and on it goes. You would think that you were buying the blessed apartment, rather than sleeping in it for a week.
Has anyone else had experience with this or similar agencies? Is this par for the course in France? Or elsewhere in Europe?
By the way, the cost to me for what was advertised as a E700/week has by now escalated to just over E1000, what with all the on-costs.

 

[aspro2]

Many short-stay apartment sites have onerous admin stuff. Yours sounds a little worse than usual, but faxing contracts and doing separate payments (often only by $$$ bank transfers) is very common.

I'd recommend looking at other sites for Paris. I've used rent an apartment in paris and would *very* happily do so again. I've also used ahparis.com which is an agent for numerous apartment owners. I wouldn't recommend it. In general, the sites where the apartments are owned/managed by the website owner are best, followed by sites where the agent handles the sign-in, sign-out and all the rest. There's also holidaylettings.co.uk which puts you in contact with individual advertisers.

 

[RB]

For France in May we have used www.homelidays.com as a booking site. Have paid deposit using paypal & all seems fine.

 

[ellen10]

When booking an apartment I looked at numerous apartment sites. All seem to operate differently.

We eventually went with an apartment through VRBO. You deal directly with the owner and there was no other hidden costs. It was great to ask direct questions and get sound feedback.

We have also booked accommodation in rural France, initially it is through a site but all further correspondence was direct with owner. Some took payment by Paypal some by direct transfer.

We have been happy with all dealings so far

 

[Pollywaffle]

I have successfully used www.vacationinparis.com twice.

They are a US based company. You pay in USD and the keys are mailed to you before departure. I found this really handy as I didn't have to be concerned about arriving at a certain time to meet someone.

Communication is prompt and they are very helpful. If you don't have time to trawl through their entire website, you can email your requirements and they will do the work for you.

I've added below what I was charged on my last trip. Postage and the damage waiver were the only charges in addition to the nightly charge. The key deposit is paid upfront but is promptly refunded when they get the keys back from you.

+++++++

RES CHARGES (in US$):
1 Refundable Key & Security Deposit $150.00 ............ $150.00
1 Global Priority Mail Service $15.00 .................. $15.00
6 Nightly Charge $160.00 ............................... $960.00
1 Damage Waiver (Standard) $29.00 ...................... $29.00
Reservation Total.... $1154.00

 

[AndyMac]

We recently used Parisaddress for an aparment rental in Paris. Their web site is easy to use including accurate availability on line, they reply very quickly and the staff in Paris were great. Much better than when I previously had to deal with the owner directly via another company. Also the price was very compeditive. The apartment was Branly in the 7th with a balcony overlooking the Eifel Tower. The apartment is exactly as protrayed on their web site. It was fantastic.

 

[Horatio]

Last March my wife and I rented an apartment through a small company named Rothray (rothraydotcom). They own and manage about 10 apartments raging from studio to 2 bedrooms, that are mainly located in central arrondisements. Our apartment was at 14 Rue Francaise and it was exactly what we were after. We had looked at other holiday rental sites and were also frustrated at the amount of bureaucracy involved for a one week rental.

Everything about dealing with Rothray was spot on. They are native English speakers, their website and information was accurate, they responded to us quickly and provided quality service. The apartment was even better equipped than we had anticipated. We were able to organise the rental with a few emails and a 20% deposit sent via bank draft, with the rest payable either on arrival or at departure. To us they were both trusting and trustworthy and we would have no hesitation in recommending them or staying with them again.

Horatio

 

[MelbMan]

We went through much the same process as the original poster in May 2008 and many of the agencies seem to want to get your details, dates and perhaps a deposit and then tell you what is available, rather than the other way around. Even phoning them they seem like a lot of other agents (cruise line websites come to mind)... long on promise but a bit short on service and product knowledge.

My brother put me onto FeelslikehomeinParis which he had used the year before. Yolande who runs this is an African American woman... think of a younger version of Oprah, slimmer, tauter, more terrific, more sassy, very well organized. In person a wonderful personality. In our case she met us at the allotted time at our apartment, handed over the keys and ran through the features of the property. Afterwards she hopped on her motor scooter and zoomed off. Prior to opening this business Yolande worked for Gail who runs another similar business. All Yolandes properties are well stocked, most have PCs, almost all have wireless internet, DVD players, an assortment of DVD and most but not all are in the Montmatre (18th district). My wife and I stayed at Picture Perfect.. the property was exactly as seen on the website very well set. Compared to the pokey €150 night hotel room we stayed in our first night in Paris, apartments give you many times the value of a hotel room.

Not sure where you have in mind to stay but Montmatre is very villagey, great little bread shops, etc, etc. When doing my bookings I set up a Google maps page of the area...

Although a member here for over a year I do not have 10 posts yet to be able to post a link

Apart from these privately managed and run apartment we stayed at a commerical version of much the same thing in Montpellier on the same trip. Based on that experience I'd be happy to plan another visit to France based on staying at some of their other properties. In Paris they had a property in Bercy out near Gare du Lyon east of central Paris.

GOod luck with your travels. My brother, his wife and their 3 late aged teenage girls managed quite well in 1 or 2br apartment for a week in Montmatre with the girls bedding down in the lounge room. Our Picture Perfect at 50 sq metres and with a separate bedroom off the living room was perfect

Good luck
John

 

[MelbMan]

Paris apartments
Paris Vacation Apartment Rentals-Short-term and Long-Term vacation Apartment rentals.

Not sure where you have in mind to stay but Montmatre is very villagey, great little bread shops, etc, etc. When doing my bookings I set up a Google maps page of the area...

Google Maps - Paris apartments & hotels

Finally a link to MySuite Apartment hotel
My Suite Appart-Htels - Business and leisure residences throughout France

 

[yoshodi]

Must say that the post brought a smile to my face. Thank you John for recommending our services. But just one little correction, my name is actually Yetunde not Yolande. Ha ha. I know a different sort of name for a lot of people but a name with some meaning. As I am Nigerian born and a Yoruba, it means "Mother come back", Sorry I know this has nothing to do with your Paris accommodations but I did want to make sure people were contacting the right person. : )

We went through much the same process as the original poster in May 2008 and many of the agencies seem to want to get your details, dates and perhaps a deposit and then tell you what is available, rather than the other way around. Even phoning them they seem like a lot of other agents (cruise line websites come to mind)... long on promise but a bit short on service and product knowledge.

My brother put me onto FeelslikehomeinParis which he had used the year before. Yolande who runs this is an African American woman... think of a younger version of Oprah, slimmer, tauter, more terrific, more sassy, very well organized. In person a wonderful personality. In our case she met us at the allotted time at our apartment, handed over the keys and ran through the features of the property. Afterwards she hopped on her motor scooter and zoomed off. Prior to opening this business Yolande worked for Gail who runs another similar business. All Yolandes properties are well stocked, most have PCs, almost all have wireless internet, DVD players, an assortment of DVD and most but not all are in the Montmatre (18th district). My wife and I stayed at Picture Perfect.. the property was exactly as seen on the website very well set. Compared to the pokey €150 night hotel room we stayed in our first night in Paris, apartments give you many times the value of a hotel room.

Not sure where you have in mind to stay but Montmatre is very villagey, great little bread shops, etc, etc. When doing my bookings I set up a Google maps page of the area...

Although a member here for over a year I do not have 10 posts yet to be able to post a link

Apart from these privately managed and run apartment we stayed at a commerical version of much the same thing in Montpellier on the same trip. Based on that experience I'd be happy to plan another visit to France based on staying at some of their other properties. In Paris they had a property in Bercy out near Gare du Lyon east of central Paris.

GOod luck with your travels. My brother, his wife and their 3 late aged teenage girls managed quite well in 1 or 2br apartment for a week in Montmatre with the girls bedding down in the lounge room. Our Picture Perfect at 50 sq metres and with a separate bedroom off the living room was perfect

Good luck
John

 

[futaris]

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Of the 8 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 4 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2010-06-04, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2010-06-04.Malicious software is hosted on 1 domain(s), including misrfoods.com/.
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[samh004]

Could have done with finding this thread earlier this year, but ended up booking with wotif and found some great rates.

Interesting that you get a malware warning when you attempt to visit the site above: Malware Warning

Looks like Google is reporting this site as malicious.

Tall Jan is malicious?