Petaluda — Hotel in Athens

We enjoyed our stay at Petaluda - it was clean, had a hearty breakfast, and made a terrific base to explore Athens from. We left a review on booking.com to this effect - a very positive review, giving the property a score of 10/10. (I always find booking.com scores to be somewhat inflated though, due to the way the site's scoring works. It's almost impossible for a property to score below "good")|We only noted one negative in our review (and if you're familiar with booking.com's protocol, you'll know the first thing guests are encouraged to do is list what they didn't like): "Be sure to communicate check-in time in advance as response time was a little slow". |In response to this comment, which was really more of an advisory to future guests than a criticism of the hotel, the owner/management posted a rude response, saying that we changed the hour of our registration at the last minute (we did not) and passive-aggressively apologising "that you waited 10 minutes but it was not our fault". |I had been willing to ignore the fact that our check-in wasn't as smooth as it could have been. I understood from the hotel description that they didn't have anyone on site, but I was shocked to get an angry and inaccurate response from an owner/manager when we'd given them a 10/10 review. |Firstly, we informed the hotel of our estimated arrival time well in advance, requesting to check in as soon as they were available (3pm), but got no reply. And, we waited outside for a good deal longer than 10 mins (more like 30-45). We were cold (having just arrived in Greece's winter from the southern hemisphere), tired (having gotten off our flight early in the morning and having wandered around all day). Neither of these are the hotelier's fault, but it was frustrating to wait outside a locked door with our bags and seemingly no way to contact the host, especially since we'd had no response to our original message. The intercom did not work, so we sent another message via the booking.com app, only to get an automated response saying that Petaluda usually replies within 15 hours (!). This was the reason for my comment in saying their response time was slow - obviously it is an issue across the board with their monitoring and not a one-off occurrence. I was not referring to the delays with check-in, which I was willing to overlook, but wanting to alert future guests that they should make sure to communicate with the host well in advance (days or weeks before arrival) seeing as the host is clearly not as responsive as others we have encountered. The nearby phone booths didn't work without a card, which of course we didn't have, so at one point we went off in search of a phone store to try and buy a SIM to call the number since we weren't getting any response via the app. Eventually, and well beyond the requested hour, we were let in.|And it turns out we're not the only ones to have this issue - skimming through the other reviews on booking.com (which has many more than TripAdvisor) shows many other guests experienced delays, of an hour or more in some cases. Nor were we alone in getting a snippy response to our review - if you order the reviews on booking.com by low rating and read through the owner/manager's responses, you'll get a good snapshot of his attitude towards guests. Even those who gave overall positive ratings are yelled at in capital letters, accused of poor parenting (for not arriving on vacation in a foreign country prepared with milk and snacks for their children!), told they are illiterate, or accused of expecting "five star" quality for having the audacity to expect hot water or a fan.|While the rooms, facilities, and breakfasts were good value, I would not recommend Petaluda to anyone looking for a hassle-free stay in Athens. The check-in experience was a minor inconvenience, but the response we received to our outstandingly positive review really left a sour taste and prompted us to revise our...

Today, I went by this small hotel near Attiki,Greece with my friend, as she had booked a room via booking.com at this specific place. She came from Thessaloniki and she was to stay three nights there, she had prepaid the room for three nights, but since I had a house of my own I invited her to stay with me. We went by the hotel, three hours before she had booked the room, so as to let the receptionist and the owner know of her change of plans. Of course, always keeping in mind, that a refund for the whole three days was never guaranteed. When we arrived there we couldn't believe what was happening. The doors were locked and nobody was inside, we thought at first that it was closed. So, we started ringing the bell, but nobody would show up. We would be ringing the bell for some time, when we decided to call them. To make sure we were at the right place. The only telephone number provided was a cell phone number. I found that quite peculiar , since it's a hotel and it had a mobile number for us to call. Either way, we started calling that number, only to find out that nobody was answering it. After a while, a man picked up the phone with a simple "Hello?" Not the greeting you expect from a normal hotel owner.. Once we start talking , I explain to him that we are outside of the hotel, only to have him reply with an "Ok, and what do you want?" I went ahead and explained to him that we had a room booked and that we couldn't open the door to get inside, and that nobody would open the door for us, even after we've been ringing it for quite sometime. Then he procceeded with telling me that he thought we'd be over at around 17.00, because that was the time my friend had booked the room, and that that's the reason he was absent. Not a good enough excuse for me, to be honest. Anyhow, he told me that since we were outside , that he was on his way over to unlock the doors for us. We waited and waited. Still, no human activity could be seen inside, no receptionists, no bellboys, no nothing. No help, whatsoever. Once the man arrived and got us inside, we explained to him very politely and actualy sincerely, since we knew, that perhaps he wouldn't be able to give us a refund since she had prepaid everything online, that she wasn't interested in the rooms anymore. He went ahead to let us know that the cancellation could not be handled at the hotel and that it had to be done by her online, on "booking.com" . And that he wouldn't be able to refund us for that night (Which is ,of course, logical) , but that he would refund us for the other nights if we did our part with booking.com. So, my friend calls her mum, who had booked the room and explained to her the whole situation. Then her mum called the hotel so as to ask for the refund herself and then a woman picked up the phone, and claimed that us girls, canceled the booking because we didn't like how the hotel looked or something like that, and that she was always inside of the hotel and that we just weren't ringing the bell. Basically speaking nothing but lies, so as to get out of the refund. We met NO ONE when we went through the reception when the man finally arrived.And nobody was answering or was in the reception when we were outside for 45' ringing the bell and waiting for the man to arrive and unlock the doors for us , so that we would be able to talk with the receptionist, who GUESS WHAT , wasn't there. It was only this one man.||It was a very bad hotel experience and I would not recommend...

This is probably one of the worst hotels I have ever been to. We arrived on our arranged arrival time to the door being locked. No explanation of how to get in, no key, no receptionist, nothing. We text the owners to let them know we were outside and after 10 minutes they came to open the door. We were greeted by a man and a woman who showed us around. At first glance we were surprised with how nice it was considering the cheap prices. However during the night, after almost 48 hours of no sleep from travelling we decided to try and get an early night. The people staying in the room opposite us (3 bedrooms in a small flat with a shared bathroom) came barging through the doors (which are awful sticky loud doors) shouting and banging. We text the owners to ask if they could tell the other couple to keep the noise down. This banging of doors, shouting and making the most noise you could ever imagine kept us awake all night and they started again at 6:30am. The owners proceeded to tell us that there was nothing they could do as curfew wasn’t until 11 even though on their ad it says 10pm. The area surrounding is super unsafe, 2 young girls in an area like such is NOT SAFE! Especially in the night. After such a bad night we decided we needed to leave this hotel and stayed elsewhere. We told the owners about the situation and thanked them for having us. We payed for our whole stay but they decided to put us down as a no show on booking.com and tried to charge us an extra fee the price of the room. We rang booking.com and was told there was nothing they can do and advised us to call the owners ourself. I called him and asked him why he was charging us again, to be shouted at abuse, him shouting saying he doesn’t want to talk to us about it and that he’s refusing to drop the charge. I would stay far away from this hotel, they’re scummy owners who have no care for your well-being and try and scam you out of as much money as they can. The most horrible person I have ever encountered, pay a little extra and stay in a...