looking for an apartment to rent for about one month in santiago, chile, May 2011. is there a reliable business that arranges rentals there?

Answered by anderskw , Las Vegas, United States

If you are looking to rent a long-term apartment in Chile, and want excellent customer service and a hassle free experience, then don't use ContactChile! My wife, sister-in-law and I recently (April 2011) rented an apartment in Santiago through ContactChile and it was disaster. The apartment hadn't been cleaned in months! In fact, we told by the concierge that the prior tenants of the apartment had left only an hour before we had arrived! There was dust on every horizontal service, the towels, bed sheets and shower curtains were disgusting, several light bulbs were missing from the lamps - one lamp appeared to have faulty wiring, as our replacement bulbs kept blowing out. One of the beds was an old broken child's bed, with a urine stained mattress. There was even a bag of rotting salad in on of the kitchen cabinets!

I was only scheduled to stay in Santiago a week, and unfortunately, the first day and a half of my visit was spent hanging around as the apartment had to be cleaned: time I would have preferred to be sightseeing. And to make matters worse, the owner of the apartment refused to provide a receipt for the $400,000 pesos in cash we gave him, and Malte Sieber, the owner of ContactChile has refused to return any of my calls, and has been very rude to my sister-in-law. We used an agency in the hopes of receiving a clean, professionally managed apartment: were we ever wrong.