Affittacamere Pratinn Vatican

Cyntia, the owner is a con artist. I'll share my experience. We were flying out of Toronto direct to Rome and booked (in advance) Pratinn Vatican for 4nights on our arrival. 15 minutes before boarding, Air Canada had an offer where you could fly to Milan that night with generous compensation (Air Canada is #1!) since they were overbooked. We did not hesitate to take this deal. It was a generous offer and we knew our stay at the Pratinn was non-refundable. When we got to Milan we informed Cyntia we would not be coming that night and we inquired about whether the stay was refundable. She did not respond to this very direct question. We then proceeded to book an extra 2 nights with her! We were in contact and kept her updated on our status. We then told her that we were on our way and would be arriving on the fourth night of our original booking. Again, no response that this was a problem. We get there, and find out she had booked someone else for our room!!!!! So she is getting paid by us for the room, and paid by another guest for that room. Meanwhile we are there in the evening, with two kids and no place to stay!!! I'm there telling her that we did NOT receive ANY communication from her OR the booking agent Agoda that our original booking was cancelled. Not only that, but she has the odacity to tell me, "see you tomorrow" for your second booking! She knows we are stranded, have two kids, no place to stay and shifts all of the blame on agoda. She has zero emotional intelligence. But even taking that aside, and looking at it strictly business wise, If our room is non-cancellable and we have to paid for it how is she ALLOWED to double book like this???!!! Luckily we had a rental car. Imagine if you arrive by train with your suitcases?! As an aside, door is closed. No one staffs the door. You have to call her - but what if you don't have a mobile phone? (as a tourist not everyone does). She avoided my direct questions leaving me with the impression I had a room (which I paid for!). The pictures are also exaggerated. Breakfast is in some dungy kitchen on that filthy floor of hers. Her place is on the corner in some rundown building. I mean go there and experience all of Cyntia's wonderful personality yourself. If I have to venture to guess, I bet she is probably writing fake reviews herself, given how she double booked my room and how sly and calculated she was during our emails. I don't know how she got a 4+ rating, but I am certainly not going back there tomorrow even though it is free/paid for. Maybe I'll go back there accompanied by the carabinieri/Italian police tomorrow, to take down an official statement of events, but not to actually stay - that's for sure! ASK YOURSELF, If I had any indication whatsoever that my room was unavailable, would I show up there with two children in the evening?! So after this ordeal was over, I finally got to the new hotel which I had to quickly arrange, at 1 am in the morning. It was that late because I realize now she was avoiding me as I was trying to contact her in the evening. I called her from a restaurant near by and she pretended that she did not speak English very well. I waited at the door. Only reason she showed up was because another guest was checking in and I had stayed there looking for her, calling. If I realized she was avoiding me on purpose I would have just left for another hotel. But I did not realize at that point that she had booked another person for my room. Only when I finally got in as she had left the door open to deal with this other guest checking-in that I realized what she had done. How do you NOT tell a guest (if your procedure is "call me to check in") that something is wrong when you are on the phone with them, and instead make the guest wait another hour, two hours, in the dead of night, thinking you're coming to open the door! And turns out her english is ok. Language-trick is just another tool in this "Lady's" (if I can call her that) bag of tricks.