TL/DR: DO NOT BOOK THIS APARTMENT
If you look at my past ratings, you will see that I have never left a bad review. If the place didn't live up to expectations, I let the owner know privately, rather than trash them publicly. This review will be different simply because the way we were treated.
We booked this place in advance. The reservation was accepted, confirmed, and charged to our account, and the owner was kind enough to let us know it did not have a refrigerator. We had booked the apartment for a month, so this was a bit of a problem, but we decided we could work around it by using coolers, or renting a fridge, or something as we didn't want to try to find something else, and we liked the area the apartment was located.
We spoke with the owner multiple times before arriving, letting him know when our flight would arrive, when we were in the airport, and when we were in a taxi and on the way.
After an overnight flight with layovers, we arrived exhausted at the apartment with all our luggage and there was no one there to greet us. We tried calling multiple times and even spoke with the doorman who told us the owner was not there.
An hour later we finally got the owner on the phone, and he told us he would not let us into the apartment as he had never approved the reservation and it was our problem to handle, not his. He was not nice, had zero empathy, and "Fix it with AirBNB, not my problem" was his final response. He was curt and rude, and I have never been treated that way by an AirBNB host, so it was a bit shocking.
As you fellow travelers can imagine, this was not ideal. We were left sitting on the street as it was getting dark with all our luggage, and with no place to go.
We called AirBNB support, who confirmed the reservation had been accepted and they tried to contact the owner to find out what was happening. The owner would not answer their calls, so AirBNB cancelled the reservation for us.
Great, however, we were left without a place to stay and the only solution AirBNB had was to book us in a smaller apartment in a different city which we declined as it was too far away and as mentioned, much smaller.
We ended up paying significantly more for an apartment in the same part of town that we found on our own three hours later. Lucky for us because it was almost 10pm by that time.
Shame on this owner who should not be able to host on AirBNB, and shame on AirBNB for not living up to their guarantee. AirBNB's gaurantee is that if something like this happens, they will find you another place that is the same or better. In our case, they didn't even come close. The only thing that was similar between the two places was the price.