Stay away from a host called Vinod advertising on Airbnb in Miami, Florida. Having used Airbnb for a bunch of stays during 2016, the last one was terrible. There was a leaky roof that stained the sofa, and cockroaches, slugs, and ants infested the condo. Collection bills were piled so high in the mail box the mailman delivered armfuls to the condo. I bought pest spray and tried to control the issue. When I contacted the Airbnb Helpline, they were anything but helpful and charged me $500 so Vinod could fix his “leaky” roof claiming I made the condo sofa dirty and stained. He claimed no knowledge of the bugs crawling around. Was it coincidence the sofa was positioned under the leaking roof and he claimed I did it? Well, Airbnb sided with him and charged my credit card for damages. Consumer protection – I don’t think so!
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Condo in Beautiful Hawaii Filled with Bed Bugs
I went on vacation to the Big Island of Hawaii recently. I booked four nights at the Kona Islander Inn in Kona. The host’s name is Ann, who is from the Seattle area. From the very beginning I should have known better to rent from her. Upon my initial booking back in September she did not greet me in any way, shape or form as a host. That was a huge red flag right there: no communication. I checked in on November 18th, 2016. On the second morning I woke up with bed bug bites on my arm. I contacted Ann about the situation, and sent photos of the bite marks as well. Her response was: “They do not look like bed bug bites; I have never had any problems before and I keep my condo so amazingly clean it’s not even possible for there to be bed bugs.”
Her strategy about this entire situation was to simply deny, deny, deny. Not getting any honest information from Ann, I went and talked with the lady working at the front desk that morning. I asked if there have been problems with bed bugs at this condo complex, she informed me there have. At this point, I informed Ann I was checking out of the unit and expected a refund for this awful experience. So I checked out, washed all my clothes at a laundromat for two hours, and spent another two hours trying to find new accommodations. The only thing in my price range I could find was a run-down hostel about a half mile from where I was staying. Dealing with this bed bug situation ruined my entire plans for that day, one of the very last days of my trip.
I requested a full refund for all reasons stated above through the Airbnb Resolution Center. Ann’s response, once again, was to simply deny any problem existed, that she kept her condo very clean, and stated she was not refunding my money. Now I have petitioned Airbnb to intervene to get my money back from this money-grubbing host who does not care one bit about her guests. Her unit is #142 of the Kona Islander Inn in Kona, Hawaii. Also check out the overall Yelp reviews of the Kona Islander Inn; they’re really horrible.
No Customer Service or Response for Superguest
I was planning a vacation with an east coast friend I hadn’t seen in 43 years. We planned a trip to Squaw Valley/Tahoe. Since my husband and I have stayed at the resort at Squaw Valley several times, I was excited to find a condo available through Airbnb. I am a “superguest” known for leaving rentals “cleaner than when arrived”, quiet, respectful and like “your favorite aunt was visiting”. I know how important it is to communicate. The condo stated: “Please, no shoes in the house as we just replaced the carpet”; “luxury condo”; “recently remodeled”. The old friend with whom I was sharing the condo is a physician. We both value a clean, safe comfortable “luxury condo with a bedroom on the ground floor”. We’re retired. We needed a ground floor. What we found was a condo complex completely empty. No cars. Three stories to the front door. An animal house ski condo that was remodeled in 1980, musty, smelly, and filthy. Torn furniture and nothing on the “ground” floor but a bedroom. Another flight up to main area. No patio chairs, broken screens. You get it. This is the living room chair picture we paid for a motel and still cannot get with a live person or refund of over $500. I’ve sent three messages to every connection I can find. Nada. It’s very scary that a “superguest” has no credibility or support.
Post-Traumatic Airbnb in Dogs’ Bedroom
We booked with Airbnb for a family business trip at a farm. The pictures online looked charming and cozy. We pulled up the driveway to see three vicious looking pit bulls surrounding our vehicle barking incessantly. The owner was nowhere in sight and two of our children were so petrified of the dogs they refused to leave the vehicle. After we pealed them off the seats and as we met the host, on our way to the house ,she announced that the cold water wasn’t working properly. We walked in the door and were slapped in the face by this potpourri odor, filling the house like a pungent fart. We started to walk through the house and noticed cell phones propped up on their window ledges. One pit bull started barking as it followed us through the house. As we went up the stairs the dog upchucked. The stairs were steep, uneven, winding, and had no handrails; it felt like we were going up into an attic.
We stood outside the bedroom doors as the host was talking. Meanwhile the dog started barking again, upchucking yet again on the floor. As we entered the room the host mentioned that the overhead light was broken and that we had to stand on the futon bed to screw the bulb in and out to get any light. None of this is a joke. They said that they had a TV, but it wasn’t set up, just connected to a DVD player; they don’t believe in watching television. They listed they had an iron, but they have no ironing board (they don’t iron clothes) and the only place to iron was on their kitchen table being used as a poker table that night. They agreed our family of seven could stay when they had four in their own family and only one shower available for 11 people. The master bedroom had no door knob, and there were no blinds or shades for the windows. Next we noticed the window wide open in the bedroom when it was 30 degrees outside. There were no sheets on the bed as she was still drying them.
She proceeded to tell us that there is no landline phone and if we need to call from our cells, we must prop them up on the window ledge and place on speaker phone. Nice private calls; there must have been a trick to it as we never figured it out. By the way, they never lock their doors… ever. At that point we began to think we were either going to be the next episode of Criminal minds or that John Quiñones would jump out announcing “What Would You Do?” and we’d all have a great laugh.
That didn’t happen. Instead we tried to remain positive until we shut the window to attempt to MacGyver a phone call. It was then that it all started coming clear to us why exactly there was this strong odor of potpourri wafting through the air. I sat on the bed, and instantly smelled the noxious – and I mean noxious – odor of dog breath. I seriously think the dogs took residence upon the bed we were about to sleep. I looked at my husband and he said, “Grab your stuff everyone, we’re getting out of here!” We shoved our stuff in our pillow cases and ran for the car. Thank God there was a Holiday Inn down the road. We literally hugged the bed in appreciation of getting out of that situation alive. When we originally pulled in, we saw they had a bonfire going. We now wonder if they were burning the bones of their last Airbnb guests and if the dog was throwing up his victim meal from the night before…
Extortion is Easy When There are no Receipts
I enjoyed my stay at Andre’s place. It was a little small for the price and did not have a microwave. However, I was willing to pay extra because it was close to work and friends. I enjoyed it until it came to actually dealing with Andre at the end of my three-week stay. I stayed for a period of three weeks. During this time the apartment had gotten messy so I was prepared to hire a professional cleaning service (despite there being a cleaning fee involved at the time of booking) that would have cost me no more than $50 for the entire apartment. However, on the last weekend there I lost my US credit card and had no access to any cash. The cleaning service would not accept my Indian credit card. I had hoped to be able to speak to Andre and offer to PayPal him money for a cleaning service at checkout as he seemed like a reasonable person. Andre did not show up during checkout.
I decided to write him a message later offering to pay. However, I was running late for my flight and could not get to it just then. When I landed, I was greeted by an extremely disrespectful email message about the state of his apartment, despite him exaggerating the messiness, I calmly replied offering to reimburse him for a cleaning service as I had done earlier. Andre is currently asking me for $130 for a maid whom he hires that cleans his apartment “a specific way he likes” and says that he has paid her in cash for which there is no receipt and hence no proof.
Secondly, I placed a cup with some water on Andre’s nightstand and this left a light stain (from the bottom of the cup) on the stand. Andre is currently asking me to pay $150 for repairing this stain, and when I asked him for a receipt for the same as proof, he claimed that he is a woodworker and that it took him two hours to repair and that his time is worth $75/hr. Once again, this amount seems absurd and is unverifiable.
Thirdly, in his rude email, Andre asked me to replace a stainless steel pan to which again, I calmly agreed. The same pan on Amazon costs between $15-$30 and he is asking me for $90 (you can buy an entire set of high quality stainless steel cookware for $90). He boycotts Amazon and only buys from a local store that apparently charges him six times the amount. Once again, I asked for a receipt and have not yet received anything.
Lastly, when Andre asked me to pay him these ridiculous amounts of money and I respectfully and calmly responded saying that I was willing to pay provided he show me receipts, he once again rudely responded to me threatening to charge me for a few nights (out of three weeks) that a friend of mine had to crash at my place because she lived an hour away and was too drunk to drive at 3:00 AM.
When I previously mentioned this to Andre, his exact words were (and I’m copy pasting this here):
“I totally understand that you invited your friend to spend the night on a few occasions and since this didn’t really add to my expenses, other than an extra used towel, I don’t see any reason to charge for her.”
However, now that I asked him for receipts for the amounts of money he is charging me he sent me an email saying (again, copy pasting):
“I also agreed not to charge you for the extra person but if you want to be all precise, I’m happy to add these to the bill as well!”
This response is very slimy and is only adding to the already bad taste in my mouth after this trip. It’s been two weeks since I stayed there and am still dealing with his completely disrespectful emails and ludicrous demands for money. I will probably have to involve Airbnb as a mediator to deal with this situation fairly. 3/5 on the actual apartment, 1/5 on the host 2/5 overall. I would not recommend Airbnb; it’s not worth the trouble of having to deal with individuals like Andre.
Disgusted Beyond Belief: Dirty Airbnb
Since Airbnb does not allow reviews on places if we leave I’m posting my story here. People may wonder why I tried so hard to make this work after reading my email. It was because I was exhausted and the thought of hauling our stuff down three flights of stairs and finding a hotel seemed like too much. I was a fool to try so hard. Here is the link to the property. Due to Airbnb policies not everyone gets to write a review which is why I was fooled.
Here is what happened. Prior to arrival, I called the host, and within 45 seconds of the conversation he said, “you can’t judge me.” I asked him why I would judge him and he said he was going through a breakup with a girlfriend and had lost his BMW. He said he had people judging him of late. If he means judging him based on what I’ve written below, then I guess I’m also judging him.
We arrived and texted Ryan, the host. He told us to come to a bar close by to get the key. My husband, Hanny, and I do not drink. It was 8:00 PM, and we were both tired. By the time we got the text we had already unloaded all of our luggage. We were not going to put it back into the car to find a bar, which Ryan told us to Google. I texted him back and informed him of this. After waiting some minutes without a reply from him, I called. He said he got the text and was on his way.
The complex he lives in does not know he is renting out space. I suspect this is not that unusual. We didn’t have a problem with that, but we also didn’t want to have to worry about what to say if approached. It was apparent the apartment had not been cleaned in some time. While not cluttered it was dirty. When we walked in, the table that should have been used for eating was not only dirty it had a dirty shirt in the middle of it. Ryan got us some towels, chatted for a few minutes and headed back to the bar and his date. We were tired and wanted to go to bed, so that was okay.
The bed was a whole issue within itself. It was missing a top sheet, and the bottom sheet showed clear signs of being dirty: nail clippings, popcorn kernels, and discharge. The pillow cases smelled of perfume. Hanny called Ryan to ask where we could find clean sheets. Ryan offered to come back, but we didn’t want to wait for him. He told Hanny where he could find the linens. He found one top sheet and a couple of pillow cases in a linen closet. I found another top sheet in our room. We were so tired we just wanted to make this work. So we stripped the bed and put on the two top sheets. Then we noticed the top sheet from the linen closet had something on it. Soap, hand lotion, who knows. At that point, I said screw this and pulled the sheets off and took them over to washer/dryer area. He had a huge mound of clothes on the machines that we had to move over to get the lid open. Inside was other clothes that I think might have been dirty. So I had to remove a stranger’s dirty clothes to wash our dirty sheets. There were also clothes in the dryer.
After starting the laundry, I went back to the room to unpack. Nothing had been dusted. The desk and the chest of drawers had a layer of dirt. I’m not picky here. I have a picture of a wet paper towel that shows the dirt I was wiping off so I could set our clean belongings on them. I went to use the toilet and found just a few squares that I could use. No other toilet paper was in that bathroom. Later, I took the roll from Ryan’s bathroom. After flushing the toilet with very little toilet paper in it, it went down and then came back up. When washing my hands, I could see the bathroom sink was not clean and the mirror was dirty. I went and got more paper towels to try to make things at least look clean. At this point very few paper towels were left. I used about ten squares in total, so there was not much on the roll. I went to put my fruit in the fridge. It was dirty. The stove top was dirty. The sink was full of dirty dishes.
I went to shower and found a dirty wash cloth hanging in there and a box that had used soap stuffed inside it. I chose not to shower. I went back into the bedroom and stepped on a dead worm. I put the dead worm on the kitchen table. I figured it wouldn’t matter since it was already filthy. I sent Ryan a text listing some of the conditions above and started packing. Hanny was about to call Ryan and tell him we were leaving when he came in due to the texts. Ryan’s unit is probably fine for young people who don’t care about basic cleanliness and want to hang out and party. For adults that are there for business, it was not so good.
Ryan kept trying to blame his cleaning lady, but I don’t think that room or unit had cleaned within the past two weeks. He could have stayed out of the bar and cleaned the unit knowing he had guests arriving. I tried to speak to him about taking responsibility and not playing the victim role. It was a waste of breath, and I was too exhausted to spend time having this conversation with him. He is too young and immature to be offering an Airbnb to anyone except his peers. He needs to change his post and stop claiming he is two blocks from the beach. While it is two intersections, it would take about 15 minutes. If you read his reviews, you will see to what I’m referring. He also has people going up three flights of stairs with their luggage. He doesn’t tell them about the elevator at the end of the hall. I think this is due to him not wanting people to notice what he is doing. He puts the onus on to his guests to ask these basic questions.
Dirty, Dusty Apartment in London: No Refunds Given
So I went with my wife to London the week of November 1st because she had an interview on November 2nd. We rented this “clean” place from Airbnb. We got to the apartment at midnight (there were only late flights out of Milan) and as soon as we started to make ourselves comfortable, I realized that the place was dirty. Now I understand we, Brazilians, have different standards of cleanliness. But the place was full of dust, and a lot of spiderwebs and spiders (3-4 in the bedroom alone) were inside the apartment. Under the mattress there was a lot of dust. Dust makes me feel sick and I knew that if I slept there I would wake up feeling terrible the next morning. I can’t imagine how my wife would feel, having a job interview the next day.
So at 2:00 AM, I decided we would leave this place and I booked a hotel room through Booking.com. We walked outside on a 4-degree night to the new hotel, where we could use a shower not full of rust and dirt and have a proper night’s sleep on a nice and clean bed. Funnily enough, the next morning we canceled our reservation through Airbnb and filed for a refund. It took until today (15 days) to received confirmation from AirBNB. And their decision is that they won’t refund us. We stayed at that place for two hours. We left in the middle of a cold night, to walk to an hotel because I knew we would have woken up sick with all the dust. The host didn’t agree with our request for a refund (what a surprise), even though we stayed only two hours. I can expect that from someone who has a dirty place, but I would expect more from Airbnb. I won’t ever rent anything else from them and I urge you to use other methods for finding a place when needed. When the time comes, Airbnb won’t help you at all. In our case, I ended up spending twice what I had in mind: a full reservation on Airbnb that I canceled within ten hours of my arrival, after having stayed there only two hours, and the hotel reservations. I hate Airbnb.
P.S.: My wife can’t even post a bad review on the apartment because we canceled our reservation within ten hours. Funny how I can’t warn other travelers about how this apartment is a bad option (if you like clean and dust-free places), but Airbnb can charge me the full amount.
Airbnb Canada Does Not Have Your Back
We paid the full cost of renting (or rather, trying to rent) a condo in Toronto. After delays – hours after the check in time – we were told via text to proceed to the unlocked condo. It was immediately obvious that the condo was not fit for occupancy: there was wet paint still on the walls, splattered paint over most floors, painted wall light switches, and painting around wall pictures. The stove was filthy, there was dirt in several corners, closet doors were missing, and the list goes on. Airbnb had to intervene and finally stated that we could have given the owner time to fix these deficiencies. The owner refunded part (less than half) of the rent. There was no further refund from the owner and a refund from Airbnb for the service fee, about $95 Canadian and a whopping $50 Canadian for future bookings. Pathetic!
Host Lies About What Happened During Our Stay
I made a booking to stay at Surry Hill (Sydney) where Debbie was my host. However, in her review to me, she totally lied about what happened and blamed us for all the unpleasantness:
1. She sent me three messages through Airbnb, with general information about her place and how to get there. This was great, but later on during the message exchange, her information conflicted with that of previous messages, so I had to ask again to verify her information. In her review to me, she said that I did not read her email at all.
2. My reaction when she told me there was no lift or Internet in the house was “Ahh??” If that’s considered rude, I wonder what’s the definition of “surprise”? At the time my husband and I made that booking, we both saw the “elevator in the building” option available, but not Internet. However, when we checked again after moving in, that option was gone.
3. When we arrived, we noticed the house was clean, but the detergent she used left a strong odour in the house. We immediately opened all windows to air the unit out, because this is quite normal. After that, when we came back from dinner, the smell was not completely gone; there was still a strong smell near the bathroom, and in the kitchen. We texted the host to ask, but didn’t receive a reply. So we searched the house and noticed that the smell was coming from the dirty toilet, behind the toilet bowl, and from her spices in the kitchen. I spent an hour cleaning up the toilet, while my husband cleaned up the kitchen at the same time.
4. Our second night, when we came back, we heard a very loud humming sound all around the house. We called the host immediately. After three calls, there was no answer. So we went out to check the source of this sound, and noticed it happened to fill the whole block. Ten minutes later, when we already decided to use ear plugs to sleep, she finally called us and offered to help, saying that she’d contact management to settle it. I’m not sure what she did, but around an hour later, the whole block was in a blackout, and the humming sound only stop around 1:00 AM (one hour after the blackout), when my mother in law already passed her bedtime.
5. The next day, Debbie texted me to mention that the previous guest gave her an extremely high five-star rating, and mentioned that we could move out to the hotel across the road; she would give us the refund for the night we haven’t stayed. Although it appeared to be a fair offer, I found it ridiculous she mentioned other guests gave her five stars, which was no use to solve our problem, and also it’s not really fair as we all know how expensive hotels would be for an immediate booking. Therefore we did not take that offer, to save us time and hassle from the move.
6. On our last day, we cleaned the house as our general practice using Airbnb, but I made the mistake of forgetting the rubbish in the hall. I texted the hosts immediately because I already left the keys in the unit; I couldn’t access it to remove the rubbish. Both replied nicely that it was not a problem, which turned out to be a lie. She mentioned in her review as if I purposely left the rubbish in the hall.
I still gave her a good review because I thought it was my mistake forgetting the rubbish in the hall, but I regret my kindness now. The way she replied privately to me and publicly in the review gave me impression she’s a liar. This was my second try with Airbnb. Although the first try was wonderful, this second try really dissuaded me from using Airbnb again, and if there’s another host like that, I’d prefer to go back to traditional hotels.
Airbnb Almost Ruined our Honeymoon
My wife and I wanted to go to the Virginia mountains for our honeymoon. We had never used Airbnb before but thought that we would give it a try and rented a cabin. When we arrived we found the place to be only partially cleaned from the previous guests, we couldn’t get any of the heaters to work, and there were parts of the cabin completely off limits due to renovations (that was not stated anywhere in the listing). We spoke with the host and they said that they were sending over the maid. After waiting for 45 minutes we felt like we were being robbed of the first day of our honeymoon. We hadn’t seen the maid yet, and we couldn’t help but think about what else might not be clean in the house that we haven’t yet discovered and can’t be easily seen (like bed sheets).
A few more phone calls to the host and finally I was offered to either get a full refund or to find another one of their cabins to be set up. Although we thought the offer for a refund was considerate, we found ourselves in an unfamiliar secluded mountain town with night approaching. We had no idea where we would stay or even how far the next hotel was. We opted to take a look at the other cabins they had available but we had issues with the wifi and barely had any cell phone reception. After a road trip looking for somewhere we could sit to get some Internet connectivity, we browsed their listings but couldn’t find anything comparable to what we had except for one. However, it was slightly more expensive and would have cost a total of about $100 more total for our stay there. We called the host back to inform them of our selection but explained that we weren’t interested in handing over more money, even if it was only $100; we weren’t very confident in their hospitality thus far.
The host was not willing to work with us on the extra cost, so we opted for a full refund and spent the rest of our night searching for where we would stay during our trip. Luckily we still had a great time, but never got our refund until our entire honeymoon was over and we had made several more phone calls. Even then we didn’t receive a full refund, as it was short $124. The host explained that this was because Airbnb’s cut of the deal was $124 and that I would have to take it up with them to get that back. So a few back and forth emails happen and eventually, I’m offered the $124 refund from Airbnb. However, they were sure to let me know that this was a one-time courtesy and not to expect it in the future because these funds are “what Airbnb uses to cover their business expenses.” I’m glad I got the refund, but I’m astounded that they believe that it would be acceptable to justify charging any amount of money to a client when the only service they were provided was absolute inconvenience. Save your money and your time and use another service.