Our academic department at the University Paris 7 needs to find several short-term rentals per year for visiting academic professors and scientists. We are quite familiar with the details of such transactions, and rarely have we encountered problems with the various Parisian rental agencies that we do business with. Unfortunately, our only dealing with Bonapart Consulting and parent company VINGT Paris has proven to be the exception to this rule. As described below, this agency initially refused to refund the totality of the security deposit that was owed to a professor who was visiting us from MIT. Fortunately, after about three months time, the security deposit was returned, but only after a considerable amount of time, effort, and discussion with lawyers.
Our problems with Bonapart Consulting arose over the three-month period following the departure of the visiting professor. At first, he was informed that they would be deducting charges from his security deposit, though they did not tell him either the rationale or the amount for these. When we at the university got involved one month after his departure, they revealed to us that these charges were related to a routine cleaning of the apartment, even though such a charge was not mentioned on the contract, nor on the rental agreement that noted there would be %26quot;no other charges%26quot; beyond the 780€ agency fee. It took them three more weeks to tell us that the cleaning fee was 386€. A portion of the professor%26#39;s security deposit was returned at this time, but even after providing us with a copy of the cleaning bill, there were still 211€ in charges that were not yet accounted for. We asked Bonapart Consulting several times to provide us with an itemized bill detailing the charges that were deducted from his security deposit, but we never received one.
All of these problems arose after a last day inspection by one of their employees told us that the apartment was in good condition and that there was no reason to expect anything other than a full refund of our security deposit. After a month and a half, Bonapart Consulting did acknowledged to us that there was indeed a mandatory cleaning fee for their furnished apartments, even though the existence of this fee was never communicated to us. Given our dissatisfaction, we posted a summary of our experience with them on a few international travel websites, but to our surprise, we were contacted by one of their lawyers, who claimed that our reviews were defamatory.
After more than two months, Bonapart Consulting finally agreed to return the outstanding balance to the visiting professor as a commercial gesture. They emphasized that this act should in no way be interpreted as an admission of any liability on behalf of Bonapart Consulting. Nevertheless, it took them nearly one more month to make the bank transfer. Their first attempt used the wrong bank account information, and one of their emails was sent to the wrong person with the same first name. Though we are happy to have finally resolved this problem, based on our experiences with other rental companies in Paris, Bonapart Consulting did not meet the high level of professionalism that we expected for an international real estate agency. The visiting professor, not living in France, has relied on us to help resolve this issue, and were he to have instead booked this apartment for a personal vacation, he would have given up on trying to recuperate his security deposit after the first month.
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As a matter of interest, how many forums and sites do you intend to sign up to to post this?
I missed the %26quot;Come on in and get on your soapbox%26quot; sign when I logged in this morning.
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Ahh, Jdbri - a bit harsh? :0)
I thought the post was quite measured. I%26#39;d be ticked off if I received that sort of service...
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The OP has been making the same post in all sorts of forums. The post has nothing to do with travel/tourism and I doubt the OP has any intention of becoming part of the TA community.
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Kathleen, I suspect that jdbri is right on the money. Especially since this is the poster%26#39;s first post. The exact same thread was posted a couple of months ago. Methinks the poster made up another screen name and started in again.
Enough already. We got the message the first time.
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There are lots of apartment rental reviews here - I though it very relevent
Don%26#39;t really use many other forums than here so wouldn%26#39;t have picked up on that (unless you mean other country forums on TA?)
Sorry, am I just missing something? OP posted an apartment rental review - non?
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The same posting was done in the Paris forum a few weeks ago with pretty well the same wording, if I remember correctly.
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Dear all. I apologize if there was any confusion, but a previous post on this matter (posted with the same screen name) was removed by myself a few weeks ago because it was the subject of negotiations with lawyers regarding the definition of defamation.
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Hi folks -
And now you understand why I photograph the h*ll out of any apartment as I check out - and I include the person who comes out to do the inspection in as many pix as possible. It works just as well as my husband%26#39;s routine with rental cars - my inspiration, btw. I make sure that the agency person understands that I%26#39;ll burn the photos to a DVD and keep them forever as a souvenir of my trip. I also try to include the front page a local newspaper to prove the date of the pictures. I have no trouble getting my deposit back.
Our academic department at the University Paris 7 needs to find several short-term rentals per year for visiting academic professors and scientists.
ReplyDeleteBonapart Consulting