This review is to give insights to potential
dayrentking customers about the substandard room that I was given during my trip to Taipei in April 2012.
I have purchase 4 nights for a room for 4 pax (dubbed as Totoro room). For room details refer to:
http://www.dayrentking.com.tw/Room/RoomDetail.aspx?id=157
The cost was a total of NT$10374 (exclusive of NT$10 and 3.9% paypal charges).
Good points of the room:
1) superb location. it's the building next to the City hall MTR station exit 4. It's about 5 mins walk from Taipei 101 shopping district
That was probably the only good point I could relate to.
The main issue with dayrentking was that, the information stated on the website was not reflective of what we should expect as a guest.
Bad points of the room:
1. Substandard room! The room was on the roof and looked like a make-shift container room without proper walls.
2. Unsecured! It felt so unsecured from natural disasters like rain storms, lightning, typhoons (Taiwan have these frequently!). I believe intruders could go up to the roof to the room and peep into the window, hang around on the roof or do anything illegal since it was already “outside” the building without security controls.
3. Dangerous! During the night, it was dark except for some Xmas lighting on the floor for us to stay clear from slight pipe bumps on the ground. Basically it also boils down to the second point on storms etc
4. No lift like mentioned on the website! The building lift stops at level 6 and does not go to “level 7” where the roof is located. Also, upon entering the building at the front door, there is a short flight of stairs to carry my luggage up before the lift is available.
5. Unkempt! I reached at about 2pm and it was in a big mess left behind by the last tenant. Dayrentking would only pack it up in the afternoon before 7pm (I believe so). It left a bad impression for me even though it was acceptable.
6. We have to be under the rain once we leave our room! As the room was on the roof, it's a distance from the stairs which was the only way we could get down the building. We will need to brave the rain if it rains just to get to the stairs. See picture below for the door to the stairs...
To live on the roof is pretty common in Taiwan, the roof top homes are commonly known as 顶楼加盖. According to online sources (such as http://www.tintok.com.tw/navi.php?id=6), such roof top homes are fairly profitable due to low cost and high rental yield. However, it is against the Taiwanese laws to have 顶楼加盖 and the country is in the midst of removing such rooms.
I did not want to risk my vacation to unsecured living space and therefore I made a call to dayrentking to ask for an exchange of room or a refund. Dayrentking initially asked for cancellation charges but we managed to bring our facts and concerns to them. Fortunately, they refunded the amount in NTD made to them to the credit card. However, we made several losses such as exchange rates $ and phone calls $ (we used our home cellphone numbers to make calls and it was really a hassle trying to talk to dayrentking and getting to the right person who could gave specific information). We also wasted the evening trying to call dayrentking and facilitate the refund and to look for new hotels.
It was a daunting experience and many of my friends cannot believe it when they saw the images of the roof top room. We were lucky that Taipei was a modernized city with many alternative rooms available for us and we had spare money on our trip for alternative rooms.
Tip for travel to Taipei: To book accommodation earlier as popular rooms run out pretty early. There are many new 3* hotels going at affordable rates of about NT1200-1500 per night (2 pax).
