Marlin Apartments Olympic View Stratford

I decided to choose Marlin for a 2 month stay as it was cheap, close to central London, and looked good from the pictures. I wasn't disappointed from these three points, but there are a few major flaws that you should consider before choosing this place:

1) The internet went down 3 weeks ago, and although I have since left, it looked like management was not at all interested in getting it fixed. Even when it was up, it was ridiculously slow (taking 5 minutes to load Gmail for example) that it was practically unusable for business purposes. When I asked for an alternative solution (i.e. mobile broadband) or compensation, all I got was a laugh. Absolutely horrible service from the management staff. Every day I was promised the internet would be fixed "tomorrow" or "soon", but 3 weeks later I was still getting the same story.

2) Their garbage dump is right next to the main entrance, and the garbage collectors only come round every few days. This leads to the piling up of trash bags and a stench. As a result, the place is infested with rats. You can see loads of rat traps placed all over the place, and I saw a rat run by my balcony twice during my stay.

3) Its located on a crime-prone area of Stratford, and at nights you can see gangs of hoodies roaming the streets. A quick check on the MET website shows that crime in that area is well above the average for London.

All in, my stay was full of hassles and was a bit of a nightmare. I wouldn't recommend it to any of my friends