Matthew Tan
I was being nudge to write a review and I thought I should be honest with what I felt. Let's start with the positive: The views are great and I made good connections at Circle. There are a few negatives, but I will list the main issues that I faced: Firstly, the problem relates to the Circles House Whatsapp contact. When I was booking and I told them specificially to send me the link to make payment as I was onboard a cruise and did not have constant wifi. They told me a date in a few days that they will send the payment link, however I didnt received the link even a few days after the said date. When I prompt them again, they change my dates by a day and sent me the payment link. I have to find somewhere to stay for the 1 day that they had agreed to earlier, but changed very close to the check in date. After my stay, when I checked out, I faced difficulties and constant procrastination to get my photos and videos despite repeated promises by the same WhatsApp number. It took about 5 weeks after I took the pictures just to get everything sorted. In the end when I received it, they had also lost almost all of the pictures that they took while "I was typing on my laptop" (with only 1 picture remaining), and also the video interview of me is muted. It was really frustrating to face such issues. The next issue relates to my stay in the shared rooms, as the private rooms were fully booked. There were constant loud creaking sound from the beds and I could barely slept well for the 31 days that I was there. In fact, that was definitely the worst month of sleep that I had in the past 1 year. Also, there was a coliver living in my room initially, that was prejudice against me which soured the whole environment. I later felt that one of her friend, which is a staff for Circles did not treat me fairly. For example, that coliver (who dislike me) had a space in the fridge twice as large as me, but I was being asked to make space to share half of the space with someone in the middle of my stay. In the end, I have to shift a number of my items to the side of the fridge. Later (due to the small fridge drawer), the new coliver spilled my hummus with added olive oil, and a lot of my foods and fruits were filled with Olive oil and it took me a while to clean and sort out the mess. When I asked the above-mentioned staff, why can't that coliver (which is also her friend) share her much larger space with the new coliver instead, she told me that she is leaving soon. That didn't make sense to me and is a clear sign of prejudice against me that benefits her friend. I managed to make peace with both of them in the end, but still it was not a pleasant experience at all. It is just that these incidents severely affected my productivity and mood during the stay. This is why I could only rate it as 2/5 (or below average) as I didn't felt at home here at all, unlike the experiences of the other reviewers here.