Florence Apartment rental company

You do have to do a lot of poking around. Can you post the URL (web address) of the site you are talking about? I do web stuff for a living and am fairly savvy at determining what is "real" and isn't - I could check it out a little more for you.

You have to keep in mind that just about ANYONE can "rent" apartments nowadays - people just grab inventory from other websites and "front" the property - and if they make the rental, then they go back to the agency or owner. It isn't illegal but it isn't transparent either. If you snoop around enough, you will find the same apartments over and over again on different sites, with different names, etc. Can be confusing!

check www.slowtrav.com, click on Italy, then Vacation Rentals.

Here's the web address for the site I was asking about. I would be very appreciative of any info you can give me. I'm looking specifically at apt F-119. We have 4 ppl and we need 2 bathrooms and enough beds that we can all sleep comfortably ( no american double beds for 2 ppl). Any other recommendations? Thanks!!!

Oops! I forgot to put the address in my last post! Sorry, here it is!
http://www.apartmentsflorencerental.com/

Thanks in advance for any info!

I havent had experience with the company you mention, but have used www.holidayhomestuscany.com
when we rented a Florence apartment.
We rented the "Boboli" apartment (2 bedroom, 2 bathroom)on Via Romana in the Oltrano district, just over the Ponte Vecchio Bridge. It was excellent and in a really good location, minutes from the Pitti Palace and the entrance to the Pitti Palace Gardens was just up the road.
They also have lots of other apartments around Florence so take a look.
Happy travels.

This is just my own personal opinion -

To me the site looks very amateur. It seems to have pretty low traffic from what I can see from publicly available sources. It has the appearance of someone fronting a bunch of properties on the web - and not a professional management company (not that it makes much of a difference nowadays... it doesn't mean that they don't have the inventory, etc. but they may not know the properties well if they are not actually in Florence).

I don't want to say don't use someone because what there site looks like or not, but I would shop around, and if you plan on booking from this site, call their number (they do have an Italian number) and ask them specific questions. Note that the number is Italian but it is a cell phone - so I would ask where they are located, if they have an office in town, etc.

There are definitely bait and switch stories out there in Florence, where people rent something they see online, only to be told there was a leak or something else happened in the apartment they chose, etc. and are taken to a different place.

Again - not that I am saying this company or website does anything like this, but you do have to be careful and do as much research and vetting as you can.

Good luck!

Lorena, we use Homelidays.com, and VRBO.com for our rentals in the EU, and have had great sucess. But, it is easy to spoof an apt rental........on most sites, since most sites do not vett the apts. Anyone can join most apt rental sites, put up someone else's apt pics, and ask for cash up front. But if they take VISA, Pay Pal, etc. you should be OK. If you also can verify reviews that others have done, thru sites like TA, and direct Email, you can rest assured that your money is being well spent.

If you get an uneasy feeling about a rental, it is very easy to find another.

We go one step futher, and ALWAYS buy a travel insurance policy, to cover us, if something goes wrong.

I have rented numerous times through VRBO [INVALID] even in Florence, and these properties are rented VIA THE OWNER! [INVALID] I'd go there, and be happy that you probably avoided a mistake!

Rented a wonderful apt. in Florence for 5 nights in July 2009. Used VRBO.com and would use them again.