We were flying from Ireland to visit our daughter who lives in Buenos Aires. Our flight was due to arrive at 9 a.m. on 18th March so we requested an early check in on that morning which the hosts agreed we could have for a fee of 100 USD. Our daughter & two Irish friends were to join us in the house that evening. One of our outbound flights was cancelled so we texted the hosts to inform them that our arrival would be delayed by a day. We asked them to arrange access for the rest of the group directly with our daughter, as the others all expected to be staying in the house from the evening of the 18th March and the booking was for 5 persons for 5 nights from that date. We requested that they should not demand the early check in fee from my daughter as she would not be prepared for it. We confirmed that we would pay the fee when we met the hosts.
The hosts' representative met my daughter & our friends at 5 p.m. on 18th of March. The representative asked our friends to sign a contract which excluded all liability for injury sustained on the property and sought to make guests liable for loss of/damage to items listed in an inventory. The inventory attached to the contract gave a price to each item listed. This was the price guests must pay under this contract if a listed item was missing or damaged. My friend started to check the inventory & in his opinion it included items which were not in the premises. He pointed this out & the representative agreed that the inventory was not accurate. My friend pointed out various problems with the contract and the representative reluctantly agreed to make deletions and amendments, but this process took some time and was not a very pleasant introduction to the house.
After the amended contract was signed the representative did request the early check in fee from my friends and this caused confusion in the group as this fee was never applicable to any of them and they were not aware of it. For all these reasons the first impression our group had was not a very welcoming one.
After our arrival on 19th March we did not see the hosts or their representative again as no-one called with us to collect the early check-in fee, so we messaged them to request that they charge the fee via the airbnb site. In this way a record of our payment was generated when we paid the fee.