Bed and Breakfast Associates Bay Colony

I have two major complaints with B&B Boston — value and service. The apt we rented was way overpriced. My sense is they do very little screening prior to renting a room so they might not have a handle on the quality. The furnishings and linens were old, and the apt was basically a dungeon — on the first floor with hardly any light; while their fotos made the place look well-​lit and in good condition. They should have disclosed the light issue and the square footage of the apt (it was very small). And it should have been about $ 500 less expensive (for the month).
Second, the staff were very disorganized about renting rooms and overall unprofessional. What they told me about availability via email was very different from what was on their website. They mailed the keys for the apt to the wrong address and were constantly after me about the location of the keys, threatening to charge me $ 50. They also accused me of damaging something in the apt without even asking me if I had done anything.

Our experience with this entire B&B network leaves much to be desired.
First, we rented a room in Charlestown which was described as a basement apartment. It turned out to be a moldy, cold, humid wine cellar-​like accommodation with peeling paint, cracked floors, a dirty sofa, and a heating system that stunk and made noise when turned on.
To their credit, the B&B service gave us another room in Cambridge after coming over to see the basement apartment and agreeing it was not suitable due to mold conditions.
The Cambridge apartment was in a newly restored house, pretty much clean, and in a good location. But there was never a host present during our four day stay. We had to let ourselves in with a key hung on a lockbox. Not a very secure feeling. Nor was any kind of «breakfast» at this «bed & breakfast» even offered. Not even a cracker.
Also, the cabinets and drawers in this room were pretty much loaded with the owner’s stuff, which doesn’t make for a homey feeling when you’re a guest and looking for places to store your own things.
The so-​called common room, which was supposed to be for guests to relax, was stripped of its TV and cluttered with the owner’s personal stuff, which also didn’t make one feel very welcome in it.
The lack of a host also led to a problem with another guest one night when we came home late. Since there was no other car in the lot and the building was dark, we assumed we were the only ones in the building until a German tourist ran down from upstairs, angrily banging at our bedroom door to tell us we were talking too loud. If a host was minding the place, this might never have happened.
Although the bedroom looked clean on the surface, my wife happened to peek behind the bed one day and discovered an empty soda bottle and a candy wrapper, which suggests that the cleaning crew here is not all that thorough.
If we had to do it all over again, and we knew what we know now, we would have looked much harder for other accommodations. The B&B manager told us her buildings are great value for the price (upwards of $ 155 a night) considering that Boston is expensive; she also said that breakfast and a host on site weren’t normally to be expected in her houses. But doesn’t this defeat the very idea of a «bed & breakfast», and the kind of personal touch travelers expect of such accommodations?