Regrettably, we must advise you to be careful regarding bookings with yourstay.com.
Also refer to the following regarding unauthorised listings of Paris apartments:
None of the above are affiliated sites. We do no business with yourstay due to their practices, yet our apartments still appear on their web site.Shortstay-london is not related to yourstay.com, and is not a competitor. Shortstay-london promotes and offers advice on booking good apartments.
A note on 'tripadvisor.com' reviews - use your intuition!
Some reviews are clearly spurious and done by formula. They imply they are written by warm, sophisticated people, loyal to their friends, and the only problem with the accommodation was one of its features: the 'free wireless internet connection' which was 'quickly resolved' by 'maintenance staff', or was it the 'Cable' which was again 'quickly resolved' (same words - same person?) by the 'building manager'!. In fact, they are written by manipulative and dishonest people. We have noted items (!) which you should take with a 'grain of salt' and (?) items that have been disagreed with by other reviewers.
First reviewer: "We usually stay at the 5 star (!) Ritz-Carlton on Central Park, this is the first time we stayed in an apartment in NY. The apartment at YourStay (!) Central Park are spacious (!), well designed and tastefully furnished(?). The location is also great, 5 minutes walk from Central Park(?), you're also short walking distance from Lincoln Centre and many exclusive (!) restautrants and bars. The staff was friendly (!) and educated. A small problem with the Cable in our apartment(!) was quickly resolved (!) by the building manager. Great value for money(?), we already recommended(!) it to our friends (!)(?)."
Second reviewer:"We stayed at tempo (YourStay(!) Central Park Building) twice. We heard a recommendation(!) from a neighbour(!) while exercising in our Gym(!). The building is 2 blocks away from Central Park, newly rennovated, tastefully furnished, 24 doorman and state of the art gym. Compared to other apart hotel we stayed before, this was by far our best experience, warmly recommended(?). The only minor(!) problem with free(!) wireless internet connection(!) was quickly resolved(!) by the maintenance staff."
The first reviewer(s) stayed in an apartment for the first time, the second reviewer(s) had stayed in other hotel apartments, but both use the same words and talk about the same things! The second person had 'our best experience' but actually say they stayed twice - which one was best? Both sound like an 'overview': the apartment was 'well designed and tastefully furnished'.
On the other hand, this sounds like a genuine review and is a lot more personal and specific:
"I picked this hotel because of all the positive reviews noted already on Trip Advisor. I just did'nt feel the positive reviews were all that justified. First of all when our driver tried to find the building we were able to locate the street address but the building said nothing about "Your Stay - Central Park". Instead it just said "Tempo". I went in and the desk clerk confirmed we were in the right place.
The Hotel is NOT located on Central Park as the name implies but is really about 4 blocks west of Central Park. Not a huge deal but still a little misleading.
The room was REALLY SMALL! Only 1 person could pass by the small sofa to get to the main area from the entrance. [ compare with 'well designed and tastefully furnished' above]
The COMMODE had a plumbers helper beside it. I later learned why as it did indeed get backed up. They did get this fixed but it really never flushed that great. [So it's not just the free internet connection that gets backed up, it's the toilet too!]
NO ROOM SERVICE as far as sheets being changed or towels (there was only 1 bath towel when we arrived and had to ask for more). I'm glad we only had to stay a couple of nights. [So much for people used to the 5 star Ritz Carlton!]
It appears that this building doubles as apartments and hotel rooms. One lady we were with on the elevator said she had lived there for 27 years.
Overall the room including bath were exceptionally clean and the TV was great.
When we check out on Sunday we were told that were told that our bags would have to stay out in the open lobby while we continued sightseeing that afternoon. We pressed this issue and they agreed to lock the bags up in the storage room.
We asked the desk clerk how much our return cab ride to LaGuardia would be and he pulled out a sheet that showed about $60.00. I don't know if this was an attempted setup with a taxi service or not but it seemed suspicious. Sure enough we hailed a cab and he quoted about 30.00 including toll. Turned out to be 28.00. [this is confirmed by ex-employees of yourstay - it is an attempt to make more money from taxis, altho this is not uncommon.]
We loved New York and even though we only paid 198.00 per night including taxes we will definitely not stay at "Your Stay" again."
We have been approached by a number of ex-employees. This one was articulate in her comments:
I used to work for Yourstay before I understood the true nature
of their operations. I was appalled to find out how they ran things (double
booking, last minute changes, no adequate cleaning procedures, false promises
of facilities and location). I left as soon as I was able to.
When I was working there he was still on the payroll for British Airways while
running this immoral company. He had claimed to be unfit for work (and may well
still do so)...
This may not affect the way he runs his business or prevent him from setting
up again and continuing, but it is fairly serious.
I am glad that something has been set up to warn potential visitors against
using Yourstay - I warned Raz and Mike constantly that this would eventually
happen, but they just laughed.
The following email has been shortened for ease of reading:
-----Original Message-----
From: Frank E. Almeida [mailto:falmeida@fibertel.com.ar]
Sent: 15 September 2003 14:17
To: Andrew.Jeffrey@stitt.co.uk
Subject: yourstay.com
Dear Mr. Jeffrey,
I am writing to you after being a victim of yourstay.com and
subsequently learning about their history of questionable activities
from John at short-stay.com.
I have also been submitting descriptions of my experience to various
websites after living through an awful experience with yourstay.com. In
this instance I will try and be as brief as possible.
I visited the UK on a business trip with my family. ....neither
one of
us arrived to an apartment that was ready. The day before our departure
I received an e-mail from youstay.com informing me that the original
apartment would not be available on the first day of my reservation.
For that first day they offered alternative apartments. However, I was
told that on the second day (the day I would be arriving) we would be
able to check in. My mother arrived first one day before me and she was
taken to her alternative apartment without the keys so she had to go
back to their offices to get them.
The following day, I did not have keys to my reserved apartment either.
I told the driver to take me to pick up the keys at the Citadines. Upon
arriving there we found that there was no one there. The driver allowed
me the use of his phone to call yourstay.com I was told that our
original apartment would not be available after all and that we would
not be able to check in until 2pm. at another alternative apartment.
This is exactly what I was hoping to avoid by having my mother arrive
one day before us and check into an apartment. I insisted that I be
allowed to at least leave my luggage in this new apartment so I was
then told to go and meet the cleaning people at the new apartment and
they would let me in so that I could at least drop off my luggage. Once
I went and picked up my mother and went to our apartment and finally
tracked down a cleaning person who knew nothing about letting me into
the apartment I managed to convince him to let us in. Upon opening the
door we found that it was still occupied since the other persons
belongings were throughout the apartment. At this point many hours have
passed by and we decided to leave our bags there in a corner while I
called their offices from within the apartment to find out if anyone
had a clue as to what they were doing. I was told that they would take
that persons belongings and leave them downstairs, then they would
clean our apartment and we could then check-in. While I was on the
phone the other tennant showed up and not surprisingly, she had a
horror story to tell regarding her experience with yourstay.com.
She packed up her things and left. By now we have been travelling all
over London, had not eaten anything and we were very tired and hungry.
We left the cleaning people or should I say person (there was only one
individual) to clean the apartment while we went out to eat something
and give him time to clean. We came back almost two hours later and he
was still there but he was finishing up. I noticed that there was a
bucket underneath the sink in the bathroom and realized that the sink
had a big leak. I notifed yourstay.com and actually nothing was ever
done about that. We just had to live with water dripping into the
bucket while we stayed there.
This whole ordeal was exhausting and even more so because we were
travelling with an infant. I was very upset with what they put me and
my family through. Not only did they change apartments on us on the
last minute but they were not ready to receive us at all. The fact that
they were going to put the other guests personal belongings in the
lobby exposed their lack of respect towards anyone and anything. I was
also told in the beginning that I could check out late on the last
day-something I had been requesting since the beginning because our
flight was in the evening-and they lied to me becuase on that last day
they told me that they could not accomodate that request. I had to go
out and rent a hotel room for the afternoon.
These people have a great looking website but they are basically
incompetent business people that should not be allowed to swindle any
more visitors to the UK. They only know how to take your money and know
nothing about executing a service.
I hope this helps in any way. Please let me know if you have any
questions.
Kind regards,
Frank E. Almeida
