Paris Attitude Class Action

Have you had a bad experience with Paris Attitude rental agency? Broken promises, lies, lack of action in fixing emergencies, stolen security deposits, increased rental fees? Are you interested in being a part of a class action against this unscrupulous agency and those of their landlords that are immoral in their dealings with their tenants? If so, please respond to this blog and select the option to email me.


Here is my story of horror in dealing with them:

My husband and I have been living in the UK since June last year. Our young adult children have remained in our family home in Australia. This was their first trip to Europe and our first time together as a family in 8 months. We had only a week to enjoy together before our son was to go home.

When we booked, Paris Attitude asked us to email the owners (Franck and Laurence Haiem) with our arrival time. We did this and received a reply from them saying they were ok with the time and would meet us at the apartment with the keys. They also said that we could call them anytime during our stay if we had troubles and they would be around quickly as they live just around the corner from the apartment. As it turned out neither if these things were true.

On the day of our arrival, our daughter’s flight was delayed so we arrived later than we had said at about 10.30am. I had messaged the owners a few times before arriving to ensure they were kept aware of the changing times. When we arrived the prior tenants were in the apartment with no sign of the owners and no idea that the new tenants would be arriving. The apartment had not been cleaned or made ready as yet. After several tries we eventually got on to the owners and Mrs Haiem told me quite rudely that we should not have arrived so early, despite having previously told us our arrival time was okay. We waited some 20 minutes for her husband who she had said was only a couple of minutes away. We paid our security deposit and remaining rental (in cash), left our bags and returned later in the afternoon.

The biggest problem of all though was the plumbing. which was not in perfect order on our arrival but was initially only a nuisance rather than a major problem. From the outset, the vanity in the main bathroom drained into the bottom drawer of the cupboard and both the bath and shower drained extremely slowly from our first use of them. 

When we went to bed on the 6th night of our 7 night stay, everything appeared 'normal' although still draining very slowly. When our daughter awoke and went to shower on the 6th morning, the drainage system had backed up and filled the bath with approximately six inches (6") depth of murky grey sewage water with bits of faeces floating in it, with a similar backfilling of the 2nd bathroom shower recess having occurred. We tried using the large plunger we found in the storeroom, hoping it may unblock the drains but this was to no avail.

This indicates to us that there was a serious problem with the drainage within the property.  It may also have had something to do with the renovation work happening on the building outside our windows, another inconvenience that we had not been made aware of before leasing or getting to the apartment.

When we finally got to speak to the owner on the day of our departure, she told us, "We have a plumber go in and check the plumbing every week". It would seem to us that a property which requires a large plunger in the storeroom and weekly monitoring of the plumbing does indeed have a known, recurring and serious problem.

Paris Attitude clearly do nothing but advertise photos of the apartments on their site and put possible tenants in contact with property owners. They obviously do not even enter the apartments. If they had entered this apartment they would have seen the condition of the vanity unit which has obviously suffered badly from exposure to water from both external and internal sources. It was in a particularly bad state given that the bathroom appeared to have been renovated quite recently as evidenced by the grouting dust still apparent all over the tiled walls.  A visit by them may also have revealed the loose floorboards that, when you tread on them, bow down quite badly and expose nail heads that protrude into your foot - not a very good example of maintenance and safety.

The owner accused us of (a) refusing to let a plumber in (b) locking the cleaner in the apartment and (c) causing the "blockage" that brought sewerage up into the bath and shower. All are completely false and we are furious about the accusations.

From the moment we realised what the problem was, we called every number we had for the owner and Paris Attitude.  No-one answered and we left messages on each number.  No-one called back, either the owners or Paris Attitude.  It was only after repeated attempts at contact by us throughout the first morning of the problem and searching the internet for a reception number (we only had the direct number of the agent Antony Tran and he did not return our calls), that we were able to speak with someone.  We were then told by Antony that he couldn't arrange a plumber without the owner's authorisation, and he was unable to contact the owner. Given this unacceptable response we asked to speak to his manager (Dorothee Debasque) who was apparently unavailable at that time, and she called us back a little later on.

While we were spending all this time trying to contacting the agency and the owners to have this problem rectified, my family and I were missing out on parts of our holiday in Paris, which nobody seemed to care about. We were getting quite stressed at the whole situation.

We were eventually told by the manager in the early afternoon that she was “trying” to find a plumber to fix the problem, but that might be difficult to do before tomorrow. We find it extremely hard to believe that she couldn't get an emergency plumber in straight away, which is something that can be done in any civilised city in the world.  It appears to us that Paris Attitude or the owner was more worried about the cost of fixing the problem than the impact it was having on our holiday.  By mid afternoon the manager advised us that they could not get a plumber at all that day, but one had been arranged, by the owners, to be at the apartment at 9:00am the next morning to rectify the problem.

A plumber did not arrive, even though because of their promises, we stayed home all morning so he could get in - more of our valuable time lost in Paris and still unable to shower since for 2 days. Again we left multiple messages with the owner and Paris Attitude.

Instead, at approximately 10:00am the owner's cleaner turned up to clean the apartment. Unfortunately she could not speak any English, but we were eventually able to make her understand that we could not leave until we had spoken to the agent or the owner and had our 1,500 euro deposit returned.

The lady left her bags in the storeroom and left the apartment of her own accord, and returned shortly after with the owner on the phone (amazing how the owner was now able to be contacted when she thought that her newly arriving tenants with a cash deposit might not be able to get in) and then passed the phone to us for a conversation with the owner.

In that conversation, the owner was quite rude and would not listen to what we were telling her about what had happened, and then actually accused us of causing the problem "because her plumber checks out the apartment before every guest arrives so it must be our fault". At this point we lost all trust in the owner.  Apparently after our conversation she told the cleaning lady to withhold our deposit, which we were quite distressed about and found totally unacceptable.

When we finally understood that the cleaning lady was not going to return our deposit, we asked her to get the owner back on the phone, which she did.  The owner then told us she would not return the deposit, we would have to wait for the plumber to come and see if the problem was our fault - more of our time in Paris was now being wasted by the owner and for a problem that we had not caused and had been badly impacted by.

In our opinion the owners decision to withhold our deposit was both immoral and illegal, and we were becoming concerned that she was completely unscrupulous and we would never see the return of our deposit. We told her that the cleaner would have to leave and we would call the police if we did not receive our deposit immediately. Apparently police involvement was concerning to the owner, because she asked for the phone to be handed back to the cleaning lady who then immediately returned our deposit to us.

We have demanded a partial refund from Paris Attitude and the owner. Quite reasonable I believe given that we could not shower for 2 days of a 7 day rental, lived with sewerage in the bathrooms of the apartment and wasted many hours of our precious family holiday trying to deal with a problem that we had not caused. We have been told that we will not be receiving any refund as the owner believes we caused the problem. This is because the plumber identified a toothpaste cap, stones and hair in the drain which was "not there prior to our rental". Clearly there could be some of our hair in the drains but the foreign matter was not ours. Is this the plumber that drained the bathroom sink into the vanity unit? Is he likely to blame his unprofessional work or the unsuspecting tenants that just happened to be in the unit when the problems became obvious?

Paris Attitude have done nothing to help us in what is clearly unjust and immoral treatment of us in this matter. Join me in getting compensation from this reprehensible company for all the money and time they have cost unsuspecting renters and travellers over a number of years (see the reviews on tripadvisor)