We booked a 4 bedroom house and reasonably expected to be able to use the facilities of a 4 bedroom house (there were 4 blokes on a fishing trip staying there). On arrival we found 2 bedrooms each with a double bed, one bedroom with 2 single beds and one bedroom with a bunk bed (with a wide lower bunk and a narrower top bunk. The double beds were made up in BR1 and BR2 and had 2 towels on each. One single bed in BR3 was made up and the top bunk in BR4 was made up. Perhaps the host thought we were 2 couples (notwithstanding we had emailed our names and clearly weren’t two couples).
A bit odd we thought but OK. We emailed the host to ask if the lower bunk could be made up instead of the upper bunk as the upper was inconvenient to sleep in. We noted also that there was only a single spare roll of toilet paper in the toilets and asked for extra.
We received a most unhelpful and officious response referring us to the house rules which apparently said there was an extra cost to use the 4 bedrooms and did we want to pay the extra. Also the rules apparently said only ‘emergency’ supplies were provided which apparently meant no additional toilet paper. I quote a part of the response to give a sense of the tenor of it.
“I can understand that an agreement of Terms & Conditions can be tedious to read - however just like anything else it is a contract…..As you can imagine hiring out a home to 2 people & finding out they have slept in every bedroom because they wanted a different feeling each morning is not economically viable. We do try to keep the tariffs as low as possible & only have those that use the extra facilities pay for them. The cleaning cost for 2 bedrooms (including linen costs) as opposed to 4 is quite different as you can imagine. We also do not lock rooms as some properties do”
When booking an Airbnb I do not expect to have to read through pages and pages of ‘house rules’ to find out that 4 bedrooms actually means 2 bedrooms. (I note that I have never seen such a long list of house rules).
I feel that advertising a 4 bedroom place at a specified cost but meaning that only 2 bedrooms are to be used is at best misleading and is also deceptive. Additionally, to hide behind the presumption that by sending pages and pages of house rules that that in some way relieves a host of the responsibility for providing a reasonable service is at best contrary to the spirit of consumer and fair contract law.
The tenor of the host’s responses to our reasonable requests meant that other issues became a source of irritation when in normal circumstances they would have been overlooked – such as the ‘emergency supplies’ being limited to a few tea bags, salt and pepper and some of detergent.
The experience certainly left a bad taste which was disappointing given that the house itself was clean, in a good location and so on.
I will carefully investigate who the host/agent is when booking future accommodation in the Denmark region and will avoid this host/agent.