Airbnb: Might as well Flush your Money down the Toilet

My boyfriend and I used Airbnb for a place in San Diego, CA. The place was not like the listing seemed. We contacted Airbnb and they only gave us $140 (one-night refund). We still had to pay $400 for a crappy place that we left at 1:30 in the morning on the first night we got there! We lost money, lost sleep, and lost time. There was no real refund. We will never use or recommend Airbnb ever again. It’s not fair we should lose so much of our hard-earned money over this (we are in college and could barely afford our vacation, let alone paying for a place we didn’t even stay in on top of a nice hotel). Stick to the chain hotels because at least they’re concerned enough about their customers to right any wrongs that happen, and give refunds where they are due. Don’t use Airbnb unless you aren’t concerned about your own protection.

I want to make sure I also include the complaints we had with the place we stayed, as we can’t even leave a review for the host we had when all this happened. This is the message we sent the host:

“You have two complaints about street noise in your reviews. We had to hear the noise as it was well after 8:00 last night, and your fan barely functioned. We knew about the lack of AC, but the fan was completely useless; even at its highest level it was still extremely under powered. While I realize you cannot control the weather, we expected that the fan would at least be somewhat useful. As for the spider, I am not sure what to say. At roughly 10:00 pm Ashley closed the window (as we would rather be hot and uncomfortable then have to deal with the cars outside) and lay back down. At this point she felt something crawling on her, picked it up, and threw it on the floor. I turned on the light and found a large brown/black spider (looked like a wolf spider) on the floor. I killed it and flushed it, but have a bite on my arm now. I would be glad to provide pictures. There was sand all over the bathroom floor and the shower. Ashley wouldn’t take a shower unless it was clean so she cleaned it with Lysol and water.

Concerning the sprinklers: we came back from our family’s house at 9:00 pm. We stepped out of the car and got completely soaked. We should not be deterred to come back to the place before 9:00 pm. This also left water spots on our car (would be glad to provide pictures) and soaked my shoes / pants.

Concerning your neighbors – the people directly above us, anyway – around 12:00 am there was a really loud squeaking noise, like a bed above us. While we could deal with this and understood it happens, not a minute later we heard some really loud moaning that lasted roughly ten minutes. This made both Ashley and I really uncomfortable, and was the final straw to us leaving. The bed was extremely squeaky and firm as well. The heat that could not be beat from a useless fan + being bit by spiders + sand all over the floor + getting soaked by sprinklers and water spots on our car + people having loud sex upstairs + a terrible bed completely ruined our first time experience with Airbnb.

We left at 1:00 am as there was absolutely no chance of us being able to sleep there. We did not do a thorough investigation of the apartment as soon as we got there. Either way, it would have resulted in the same conclusion: leaving. For what we got we would have had a much better experience at something even as cheap as Motel 6 for much less money. While I do not mean to come off as rude, this was an extremely frustrating experience. Especially as we do not have much money (in college) and had to find another hotel room at 1:00 in the morning.”

Our host then replied tough luck. Never again.