This apartment is in a safe area, it is basically clean and well decorated/appointed. We booked months before the New Year celebration in Rio and were looking forward to the stay in this apartment which we selected because of its proximity to my sister-in-law’s home.
Upon arrival we were unable to locate the building the apartment was located in, as the name of it was not divulged in the listing. We reached out via WhatsApp to her “secretary” who was less than polite and even less helpful. When we couldn’t locate the apartment she recommended we “ask someone”. Upon arrival into the appropriate building, we were greeted to incessant loud barking from 2-3 small dogs confined in the apartment down the hall. It was literally echoing down the hall and was like being in a kennel. We asked about this issue and were told by the secretary that nobody had ever had a problem with the barking. She offered not a single word of apology or solution. My husband spoke with the manager of the complex who said that animals were allowed and there were no noise ordinances or rules at all for controlling pet noise. Thankfully, the noise did improve during our stay, but there were periods when the barked non-stop.
That evening, getting ready for bed, we noticed the pillows were extremely heavy and lumpy. Upon removing them from the pillow cases, we found what can only be described as a nightmare. They had to have been 20 years old....yellow and brown from years of use, covered in rings and stains from who knows what...one stain appeared to be from blood. We immediately sent photos of the pillows to the secretary, who was again very rude, abrupt and offered ZERO apology or solution to this issue! She re-iterated that “nobody else had ever had a problem with them”. We ceased communication with the secretary on WhatsApp at this time, as it is against Airbnb rules to communicate outside of the platform. We initiated a conversation with Camila on the Airbnb platform. My husband communicated with her at this time, since he is a native Portuguese speaker and I have intermediate skills. Their conversation went back and forth for over an hour with us simply asking for the pillows to be replaced and her refusing. She became incredibly unreasonable and hostile, accusing “me” of being discriminatory towards her secretary who was a “lower class” person, and telling me in an incredibly offensive tone that I should “do some research on a country before traveling there to avoid ‘culture shock’ and not discriminate against the people there.” This was horribly offensive and completely untrue! We are a bi-cultural family, my husband is from Rio and a native Brazilian. This was not my first trip to his home country, and I not only speak the language but am quite versed in the culture. She was simply nasty towards us, with no apologies. My husband rapidly let her know that he was the one communicating and he was, in fact, Brazilian.
This unfortunate experience derailed 2 full days of our stay, dealing with Airbnb who ended up refunding a large portion of this stay, since due to the holiday they were unable to find us other accommodations in Rio.
The pillows we bought to replace the filthy ones cost $9. Nine bucks. That’s all this lady had to do to make the problem right. Instead of offering a sincere apology for the trouble, and simply providing clean pillows, she chose to attack our character and create an extremely uncomfortable and hostile environment for our stay, accusing us of “abusing” her secretary. We provided transcripts of every message sent to Airbnb to insure that they were aware these accusations were completely false. I truly feel this host should be removed from the Airbnb network. However, since that is not the case, I cannot recommend.