I understand human frailty, both my own and that of others. My attitude to Airbnb hosts has always been that if they provide the accommodation advertised and paid for, then any mild behavioral peculiarities need to be overlooked with good humor and a smile.
Early on, in our experiences of Airbnb we were glad to book shared rooms and kitchens in houses and apartments and usually found that these were happy and memorable experiences.
Then again, some, maybe young financially struggling couples, who’s relationships with others might be largely formed on-line, do sometimes, early after becoming Airbnb hosts, get quite a jolt when they arise one morning to find virtual strangers brewing coffee and making toast in the kitchen that they had advertised as available for use.

This particular host, who gave us such a bad review wasn’t young but I don’t think she was really prepared for the effects of letting her basement apartment for a 2 month period. From some of her comments during our stay it seemed to come as something of a surprise to her that we would be using the kitchen for cooking food. After all, most of the one-nighter guests would have gone to the local hotel of restaurant to eat.

Though the apartment was self contained and a separate space the host seemed also quite taken aback by our family members from just up the street calling in to visit us during reasonable hours of the day and evening.
This social aspect of our visit we had made clear during our initial pre-booking conversation with the host but somehow she still seemed to find it an invasion of her privacy having folks going in and out through the garden gate.
Then again, after the bed-bug infestation became apparent quite early on, the family visitations tended to take place at other venues.

To “Steve”
I did leave a honest review. The apartment was excellent for our needs both in it’s facilities and it’s location.
Due to the lack of other accommodation in the area and because there were so many other aspects of the situation that were suitable for us, both now and in the future, I chose to make the bed-bug problem a private issue between myself and the host. This was in the expectation that the problem would be overcome effectively by the host.
I thought I had handled the situation most diplomatically but the effect was unexpected and quite extreme.

However, he posted a review which was a pack of lies and actually fabricated an incident. Due to my being on the road, I didn’t always have Wifi access and it was a few days after he posted the review that I read what he had written. I was livid and emailed Airbnb immediately. Long story short, his nasty little review was removed because it was not in line with Airbnb policy.

This is one of the many problems with Airbnb – the reviews are not monitored. The language he used in my review was unpleasant and Airbnb should have measures in place to block such vocabulary. After all, their system works efficiently enough to block words Airbnb does not like in correspondence between guests and hosts!

unfortunately other than asking if you want to cancel this reservation, Airbnb Won’t be helpful either. They are monster bastards.

But back up from that point a moment . You stayed there 2 bloody months. It wasn’t overnight. Though I doubt it was even filthy, 2 months without a host maintaining to her own cleanliness standard is a long time, you can tidy all you like, but there’s a massive difference between tidy (which would be you taking out rubbish, washing dishes and surfaces, maybe stripping beds) and 8 weeks worth of dusting, deep cleaning bathrooms, fridges, cupboards, washing every blanket, cushion, throw etc which is what this property would have needed.

Absolutely filthy is you leaving your rubbish piled up, grease all over the cooker and oven, mould growing in the freezer, so unless you did this, the host should have elaborated and specified exactly what was filthy and taken it from that exorbitant (!!!) security deposit. Host is a moron, you need to fight this with airbnb to get that black mark off your profile. Good luck