I originally had an Airbnb booked and paid in full for my vacation in Florence. Due to a…read morerecommendation from a workshop I was taking in Florence, I decided to rent an apartment for 26 nights short term from Pitcher and Flaccomio instead of Airbnb in an attempt to support local Florentine businesses.
This was a huge mistake on my part and I should have stuck with Airbnb. Corso, the manager of the Pitcher & Flaccomio agency, and Bei, one of the agents at Pitcher & Flaccomio are the rudest, most entitled, and disrespectful people I have ever come across who work in customer service. They should have never worked in customer service in the first place with their disrespectful attitude. I am confused as to why they chose to work in this field if they didn't want to provide good customer service?
First off, Bei rushed through the apartment walkthrough and told me the WRONG DIRECTION to unlock the doors for 2 out of the 4 keys to the apartment leading me to believe I was locked out one evening.
Then since the laundry room for the apartment self locks, I was locked out of the laundry room when I accidentally left the laundry room key inside the laundry room when I closed the door. When I asked Bei nicely if I could please pick up a spare key to open the door, she replied that 1. The key was never copyable so no other copies of the laundry room key exist or have ever existed, 2. The door cannot be opened using a locksmith, and 3. The door has to be completely taken off the hinges/ wall in order to get into the room.
Instead of Bei being understanding that I live in a country where we don't have self-locking doors and keys that cannot be copied, she blamed the whole situation on me with her terrible attitude and said this is all my fault and this has never happened before in the 10 years of renting out the apartment. When I asked her why then in 10 years the laundry room key and lock was never updated, she had no response to that due to her and her agency's lack of diligence and work ethic. There should never be a reason or excuse a rental agency doesn't have an extra set of keys. I guess 10 years wasn't enough time for them to update the key and lock due to their intense lack of professionalism.
Corso then called me about the situation and gave me an attitude right off the bat over the phone and through WhatsApp. When I asked him to speak to me in a respectful manner, he made excuses for himself and didn't change his attitude or rude manner of speaking towards me.
Other issues that arose with the apartment were: ant infestation in the kitchen, curtain falling off the window rod, broken utensils left for me in the kitchen, the toilet, sink, and shower all clogging in the bathroom, and items such as towel hangers falling off the wall.
To add insult to injury, Pitcher and Flaccomio decided to return only HALF OF MY 1000 Euro deposit, so I only got 523 Euro back credited to my account. They claimed the cleaning was 150 Euro and the utilities cost 282 euro. How can the utilities for less than one month for a small studio apartment be 282 Euro ($328 USD). They didn't even have any photos/receipts of the utilities cost to back up their claim.
If you are thinking of renting from this agency just don't even bother with this business. I paid 1000 Euro for the deposit and 2400 euro to rent the apartment, and the whole time the staff at Pitcher & Flaccomio acted towards me with a rude, hostile, and entitled attitude as if I was in the apartment for free or squatting which was obviously not the case.
Please just go with Airbnb when renting in Italy/abroad, because as an American company, they would never allow this kind of attitude towards their customers be an acceptable practice, and they would cover any issues related to the apartment. This agency thinks that just because they are in Europe, they don't have to provide any good customer service and they are happy to just treat their customers like trash and not do any part of their job.
