When we arrived at the apartment, we could not get in with the code that Stephen had sent us. We called Stephen, and he said he had changed it, but forgot to email the new code to us. As soon as we opened the door to the apartment, we were hit with the smell of smoke. Upon calling Stephen again, he said his cleaning people had told him that the previous renters had not taken very good care of the place and had smoked. I can only guess there was more than one person smoking as the smell was strong.
Stephen did offer a refund, but we had to find another place to stay, and lug our luggage to the hotel I found, we were visiting from out of the country, so no car... We ended up staying at Hotel Indigo, a very lovely hotel. I did have to email a few times due to partial and not full refund, and I still ended up paying the booking fee!
Writing a negative review is not something I would normally do, but I feel this could have been handled more honestly. From my perspective, Stephen should have emailed us immediately with the information his cleaning people had shared. I can only guess he hoped we wouldn't notice, or would just deal with it. And, he should have made sure we had the correct entry key so we weren't standing in the hallway with our luggage. Again, I am guessing he had it changed after the previous tenants checked out, given the state of the apartment.
As for the actual apartment, it is sparse with just the bare minimums. The walls need to be repainted badly. There were several stains on the walls. We have rented houses and apartments from VRBO on several occasions, and this is the first time there was nothing as far as information about the area and a welcome note of some sort. Being tourists, we always appreciate the information the owner shares with us about the area. Again, what is there is very basic; not even tea or coffee in the cabinet.
After leaving Newcastle, we traveled to our VRBO rental in York, which was lovely.