What a nightmare staying there! Sarah asked us to leave her house because we asked her to raise the temperature through central heating. When we arrived in the evening, the room was very cold. There are two portable heaters in the room which would take a long time to warm the whole place. We requested her to turn on the central heating to warm up the room quickly, she did. She said that she did not turn on the central heating for us as it’s noisy and that she could give us more portable heaters. Then we said: we are fine with the noise and we don’t need more portable heaters as it will only use more power and was not safe either. Then the next morning, she got quite paranoid and said she couldn’t allow us to use the central heating all the time. If it’s not about saving money, what else could it be about? It looked like we did not pay for the power. Her extremely strong desire of taking control was also reflected in her house rules which I did not pay enough attention when I book it. Otherwise, I would have booked somewhere else! We had no choice but to read her rules very carefully before check-in, but still got lost as it’s very dark at night and google Maps led us to the other side. As her reviews show, other guests also complaint about it sometimes. It’s just pretty common. BUT she took it as we did not read her rules so we were not suitable to stay there... Another interesting thing was that one of her house rules says: if you don’t turn off the lights and heaters when you go out, she will do. How would she know if it’s on or off? The only way to find out is to go inside and check everyday. Think about it, it’s just so creepy. Do not expect you will have your privacy, as she could tell our room temp when she asked us to leave. It’s just so weird! If she does care so much about her house, she doesn’t have to run this business, just keep it for her own families. Some of her reviews also mentioned it’s too cold in the room. Her response was always: I will use a Chinese instruction next time for the heaters. To me that was very rude and quite racial. It seems that she thought they felt cold because they did not how to use the heaters. How hard could it be to turn the heater on?! She’s never thought if the issue was from her end, if the heaters were really adequate for cold nights especially in cold times, if the heaters were really as powerful as she described, if people from other countries will get used to this temperature. No room for negotiation, no choice, just follow her rules. The most ironic words from her was: She set the room temp to 22 degree, lower floor is 20 degree. Most Canadian homes did the same. But she forgot she was catering guests from other countries, where people might feel 20 degree was enough. I guess this temp was indeed fine for locals but that does just justify the fact that we could not choose at all. And when we arrived there, the temp was well below 20. I’m a Chinese running a motel in New Zealand. I live in New Zealand, but I will never forget where I’m from. So show some respect to people from other cultures if you do care about the business. The only comfort came from her Husband Paul who called us afterwards to apologize as he also disagreed with his wife.
But this awful experience did not spoil our trip at all due to Air BnB’s great service. The case manager issued the full refund due to the cancellation by the host and offered us a decent amount of allowance so we booked a much better place in the city center.
中国人不要订这里，房间冷得要死，房东不开中央空调，只给两个小的取暖器，还不承认是为了省电。没有隐私，规矩一大堆，对中国人感觉还有歧视。崇洋媚外！说我们房间温度过高，让我们搬出去。你想象一下，在外面住酒店还不能自己控制温度是什么感觉？房东还要自己进来检查有没有关电器是什么感觉？大家喜欢这种酸爽的话，可以试试。