I dislike having to leave a negative review, but in this case I would feel guilty if I didn’t. First the good: this apartment is in a sweet location in Roma Norte in an historic building. It is quaint, charming, and has a 24 hr/day security guard. We were never worried about our safety. The apartment was clean, in all places where possible to clean - for example, it is impossible to clean a bathroom vanity that has absorbed enough moisture to swell and delaminate.
The bad is quite bad: the property manager withheld the security code from me, though I had paid in full weeks ago. After completing third party verification (pretty standard a this kind of place) he demanded that I complete “financial verification.” He informed me via the Expedia messaging app that he wanted me to send a selfie of me holding my credit card…to a WhatsApp number…in Peru. Of course, that is insane, so I refused. He then demanded I send proof that I had paid in full. I offered to forward the receipt email to him (though this is also insane.) He agreed to that, but sent gibberish email addresses to contact him. At this point- nearly midnight- I booked another lodging via Expedia for my exhausted family of four. At 1am, after submitting no additional information, the property manager finally relinquished the codes. This was just the first day, and we had already exchanged 40+ messages.
When we got to the apartment, the next day , the lockbox code worked, but there was no key in it (the manager sugge