Comfortable 1 bedroom apartment in Helsinki

The stay was very good, the flat corresponded to the description and everything was provided for our well-being.

Our experience started the moment we entered the apartment: the smell inside was terrible. The first room had a door with a dent in the middle, and the bed linen on the first bed was clearly not fresh. When we tried to change it, we opened the wardrobe and found additional linen simply thrown inside, looking used and even stained. On another shelf, there were used underwear and dirty, smelly socks. The beds themselves were dirty, full of stains. At that point, we wanted to clean at least a bit, but the vacuum cleaner was unusable — extremely dirty and with a completely full bag. In the bathroom, when we turned on the sink to wash our hands after touching the dirty furniture, water leaked directly onto the floor from the pipe. The second bed also smelled bad and had multiple cigarette burns and stains. The kitchen was the “best” part, but even there we found several empty alcohol bottles under the sink and garbage that hadn’t been thrown away. In the upper cupboards we found expired food. The whole apartment looked as if previous guests had lived there a year ago, had a wild party, and nobody had cleaned it since. We contacted Booking.com customer service to report the situation and cancel our stay. They sent a request to the host for a full refund. After that call, we contacted the host directly, explained everything, and sent photos. He told us he needed to speak with Booking.com first — and then stopped replying to our calls and messages. He also refused to accept the refund request. At this point it became clear that he was trying to scam us. Luckily, we were able to rent another apartment. Booking.com eventually refunded the full cost of the apartment and additionally provided a voucher to cover the price difference for the new booking. To prove all these situations I provide a photo documentation below.