Home now but recently rented two airbnb's (my go-to). The first one was fantastic. The second one was like nothing I'd ever seen before, absolutely filthy in that way that you think, "This is not habitable" upon walking in. However, we were determined to make the best of it because the owner was very nice, the apartment had a great location, and we decided "let's not be fussy or judge-y." We had reserved it for ten days.
So, we know about the policy that says that you have to 1.) contact the owner first if there is a problem and 2.) contact airbnb within 24 hours of inhabitance to get a refund. The problem was that everything in the apartment kept breaking to the point that it was ridiculous and unusable: the pull-out bed broke, the microwave AND refrigerator broke, the glass shower door fell off suddenly, something in the kitchen started spilling, a raw sewage leak happened near the door on the fourth day and construction workers began jack-hammering to fix it, only two electrical plugs worked, one stove burner out of four worked, which along with the fridge and microwave wrecked my plan to self-cater, the washer/dryer did not work at all, and I just wanted to cry and cry and get out of there but we learned about these issues very late, like on days 2-5, as they developed.
Every time something happened, I would contact the owner, and he would show up in minutes and say "Eh, the place is very old? What can you do? How do you like the city? Eh, you need to cook? There's a great restaurant down the street..." and I really thought he was nice, but clueless. He managed to at least put the shower door back on and ask the people jackhammering to not start before 9am.
Then the really bad thing happened, which lead to us checking into a hotel for four nights despite still paying at the apartment. To get in, you had to use three sets of keys shaped like jailers keys to get past two doors that were made of iron bars. This included exiting. We got up and tried to exit on the 6th morning of being in this apartment and found we were locked in, and nothing we could do would unlock us. The apartment was underground, by the way, so there were no windows to crawl through. We texted him and he said he was out of town and instructed us to try a screwdriver and where it was. We did, and it didn't work. Some neighbors heard us and came and helped with their screwdrivers. I think we woke them up since it was like 6am. At this point, I wanted to scream. With all of the doors open, we packed everything and went to a nearby hotel and checked in (for a price I cannot afford and am still paying off on my credit card). I texted him to ask him to please fix the door lock on the 6th day, and he said he couldn't because "His keys worked perfectly." I was tired of this guy, who was like 22 years old and seemed nice but clueless about the whole thing. I didn't have the heart to tell him why we were leaving because I was cognizant of airbnb's 24-hour policy, so we didn't know what to do at that point.
This was all about two weeks ago now. But I've thought about asking if there was something else we could have done? Nothing came to our attention in the first 24 hours probably because we checked in at 8am, left for the entire day until 10pm, slept, woke up early, went sightseeing a second time, and then came back at some point in the afternoon. And the being locked out part didn't happen until day 6, and he did refuse to fix the locks even though our keys would NOT work (I suspect someone else stripped them with a bad key while we were there? The neighbors with screwdrivers?)
Would you have involved airbnb in this situation?
We want to definitely keep using airbnb in the future. This guy also had many positive reviews with subtle warnings... like "funky but charming" and stuff. I think it's occupied almost 100% by young partiers! We were a 40-year old family of three with an older teen renting for an extended period of time with the expectation of being able to self-cater (which I told him clearly when we arrived). He just dismissed every concern or mickey-moused it together to kind of work?
How could we have handled this differently, if at all, and should we have?
Also, how can we avoid this kind of thing in the future? This one had plenty of good reviews?
Thanks greatly!
And I hate to complain only about bad things! We rented another airbnb for about 9 days before that, and it was small, but literally perfect in every possible way, and I saved a LOT of money cooking for my family and washing clothes too. Plus, it was a lovely apartment and the owner was also very nice. So I am not at all saying airbnb is somehow "bad." We just had this weird, weird experience and did not know how to handle it or if there is any refund we could recieve now, which I highly doubt.
Submitted July 17, 2016 at 12:18PM by mahakali_overdrive2 http://ift.tt/29GGkdY AirBnB
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