This was truly the most negative Airbnb experience we ever had. I say this as someone who has hosted 300+ people and stayed in about ten Airbnb’s over the past six years. We stayed here for 2.5 months but we should have left earlier; we failed to notice early warning signs of bad hosting and I wish we read his other negative reviews better. We were hoping things would improve, but they only became worse.
To give you an idea: three weeks without a toilet (needed to flush using a bucket), broken air conditioner, every day there was new cat pee on the balcony, which prevented us from opening the door (we got tired after cleaning each day), lightbulbs spontaneously burning and incorrectly installed lights (made by the host) that caused electrical problems and electric shocks from the washing machine (a fire hazard), many rusty nails sticking out of the hardwood floor that ruined all of our socks (and hurt our feet), description says “A/C” but there’s only air conditioning in the bedrooms, a check-out fee (an early check-in fee is understandable, but a check-out fee during the daytime?), and lying about heating in the apartment – we had to wear winter jackets when autumn had just started.
The wifi didn’t work on my phone and the host said: “It’s working on my phone; nobody has ever had wifi issues in my apartments.” We read in at least five reviews that his other places had wifi issues too. The windows leaked when it rained, and there was a nightclub that was open until 7:00 AM and was very loud (I specifically asked the host about this; he just lied about it). The worst thing, however, was both hosts. In early messages they were friendly, but this changed as soon as they received payment – their tone soon became sarcastic and at times even offensive.
The very first day the 25+ year old air conditioner broke down, it was 90+ degrees out. The host refused to repair it. In the end they even wanted us to pay for repairing the flush of the 35-year-old toilet by saying we broke it. According to reviews of other guests and according to the plumber the toilet has been having problems months before we arrived. They knew about this but still tried to charge us.
We tried to solve some of the problems with the host and Nina at first. They were never helpful (at best) and at times even rude (at worst). Looking at how badly they dealt with the air conditioner, the nightclub, and the toilet and wifi issues we noticed we couldn’t expect much from them, so we stopped asking. Later the host said, “Why you didn’t ask me?” Well, we did notify them several times, but they just chose to ignore us.
The review above was deleted by Airbnb, because we mentioned other reviews. Why don’t they then remove that one sentence? Does this happen often? I wonder how many negative reviews Airbnb deletes on a yearly basis based on this. After the review was live for a very short time, the host even sent me this: “How can you be so repulsive? The lowest kind of human behavior… when did I not answer your problems? We constantly attended to your requests! You need to go to a hotel, not an apartment.”
This only confirms how crazy he was. While they never ever attended to the issues, this message comes on top of everything that happened. I need to say again that I was very understanding and even kind during our conversations, being a former host myself, but this host was completely uncooperative. We read some negative reviews about this host but wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt; as a former host I know how unreasonable guests can be. I now wish we didn’t. The least Airbnb can do is publish our review and warn future guests.