Once again, we had a good experience with sleepinitaly.com.

(Our previous booking with the company was 2 years ago, when we booked a wonderful Rome apartment that, alas, is no longer on the market. Everything about that rental met our expectations and the company's service was prompt and professional.)

Giulia Amato, their contact person, again provided us with timely responses to all our inquiries, without complaint.

Giulia seemed to take a genuine and personal interest in our needs. She was available even over the weekend.

In the end, we did NOT book with them: I had left our booking so late that they did not have exactly what we wanted.

And along the way, we had found a vrbo.com booking that fully met our needs...

Next time, I will book earlier than I did in 2007, to avail myself of the fullest sleepinitaly.com selection.

Today, I feel full of gratitude to the company -- and some slight remorse.

Giulia, you have our thanks and our heartfelt endorsement, if not our cash.

We emailed this post to Giulia; I still hope to provide her with some confirming posts from other satisfied sleepinitaly users.........

I am happy you had a good experience with sleepinitaly. I did not. I was booted out of the apartment I chose and put a deposit on months before and ended up in a dark, ugly studio.

The explanation was the original apartment was "overbooked" -- that is, there was no emergency situation.

It pretty much ruined my visit to Rome.

That's a terrible experience and I empathize.

It may have been their fault but maybe not:

I've noticed that most of the booking agencies, including sleepinitaly, seem NOT to have exclusive rights over the property in question.

IE owners list with multiple companies, a situation that invites disaster unless the owner adequately coordinates among them...

Service at Sleepinitaly is HIGHLY erratic and indeed, somewhat of a crapshoot.

I had reserved an apartment in Florence for my family and paid a deposit and reconfirmed. When we arrived and phoned the local contact, we were told "that apartment simply does not exist."

We were not offered anywhere near suitable alternative accomodations and had to fend for ourselves with our toddler daughter in a strange city, at Easter.

No extra compensation was paid for our trouble and even the deposit refund was slow in coming and like pulling teeth. No apology, either.

I've had a very good experience with Sleepinitaly, and have booked another apartment with them this summer.

A minor point, on one post I think I referred to Giulia as a "she" and was told that Giulia is a man. I see Tedgale refers to Giulia as a woman.

When I spoke to Guilia on the phone, she certainly sounded like a woman.

We had a great experience with them, but agree some difficulties might come from the apartment owners.

On our trip to Italy in 2005 we booked a Rome apartment through sleepinitaly months in advance. Shortly before we departed we were informed that the apartment was accidentally 'overbooked' and several alternatives were offered. None were as inviting as the one we had originally booked but we were happy with our final choice and it all turned out okay. However, we were arriving in Rome at the end of a seven week trip. It would have been very awkward if the apartment was suddenly 'unavailable' after we had already left on our trip.

I just put a deposit down on 2 apartments I found on Sleep in Italy. These apartments look just like ones I saw earlier on another rental website and were told that they were unavailable. That's why I didn't ask about them when I first saw them on the Sleep in Italy website. They sent me a list of their available apartments yesterday and both of them were available and I told Sabrina I wanted them and she sent me another e-mail to make the deposit which I have. How often does this overbooking happen? Call me naive - I thought in this day of computers that something like this would not happen. This will just be swell if I arrive in Rome with 6 people and have no place to stay.

I found the apartments on another webiste by another name but they are the same apartments (you can tell by the pictures/location) and they are the ones that Rental in Rome says were not available a week ago and now Sleep in Italy says they are. I wrote both of the rental companies my concerns about overbooking and will have to wait and see what I hear back. I am beginning to get very upset about this whole apartment renting. It's been nothing but a pain in the neck, I've spent hours researching it, and when I've go to Slow Trav I've read some bad reviews about apartments that look great on the website. I've never had a problem with a hotel in Europe before and I have a bad feeling about this trip. I'm about ready to forget the whole apartment thing and rent hotel rooms where I have a better chance of not being overbooked or having a bad room. But I guess better to find out now they're overbooking me than at the last minute.

We used Sleep in Italy on our last trip and their service was EXCELLENT. I was the problem, as I kept changing my mind, reserving, unreserving (is that a word?), rereserving. We had 2 apartments. They handled every contact, every change with the most professional attitude and with no complaints.

I highly recommend that company. I'm sure they are not always perfect and problems will always pop up, but for us, I could not have asked for better.

dave

Wow I feel very fortunate that we had no issues with SIL when we rented our Rome apt in January 2007.

I had a very good experience with sleepinitaly. Guilia was very nice to work with, and answered all of my questions promptly. The next time I'm in Rome, I will use their service again.

Johanna

If "Giulia" is a man, then he can't be too pleased that his parents gave him a woman's name.

BTW, I've had good experiences with sleepinitaly, but I guess a lot depends on the individual apt. owner/manager.

The second time I rented in Rome through Sleep in Italy, I saw the same apartment with another agency. After I had sent my contract and deposit, for fun I contacted the other agency giving my dates and was surprised that they told me it was still available. I confirmed that with them again (twisting the truth a bit and saying another agency had told me it was already rented then). Again they insisted it was available. I relayed that to Gulia and he/she replied not to worry -- that they work very closely with the owner of that apartment and it was definitely being held for us. Indeed we had no problems on arrival and it was a great experience. But it is a bit scary when some apartments are listed with several agencies.

The saga continues - pretty soon it will be a bigger story than Gone with the Wind. This is what I just heard back from Sleep in Italy:

The problem with these two apartments is that is owner is not very precise in updating the availability database of the agencies he works with and he creates some problem. Moreover these apartments are not good value for money at all and we tend not to offer them at all.
Anyway, after your e-mail I called the owner to double check the situation and in fact Giulia A is not available and Giulia B is available.
Why do not you take Paradiso Bis and Sant'Andrea..they are located in the same building and they are very very good properties.

I have to go to work now but I'll have to check them out. I've seen them before and there was a reason why I didn't want them but at this point I really don't want to keep searching. Glad I recognized those apartments on 2 websites. Buyer beware!

If I were you, I'd avoid the ones with the erratic owner.

Some apts are listed by several websites (I rented one myself in Paris, totally diff. company), but that is one thing they are supposed to do as any agency -- check with the owner and make sure it is available. It sounds like SleepinItaly has gone too automatic and now doesn't verify directly but depends on the owner to do something online to indicate availability. Given they know the owner is erratic in updating, I think they should either always call the owner, not wait for some cutomer to insist they check, or b) drop the owner completely and not work with them. I think (b), especially since they say they aren't good value and the owner doesn't update. So why are they still working with him?

I wondered the same thing. The only reason I caught it was that the terrace pictures from that apartment are very pretty and I remembered seeing them before on a different website.

At one point I was going to rent an apartment in Amalfi and in my research I noticed the same one in two websites. I played the agents against each other and got a much better deal.