First of all, the apartment is lovely and tidy. It is a very comfortable place to stay, a lovely neighborhood with restaurants and bakeries. The distance from the old part of town where most of the sights are was a bit far for my younger child (8 years old)—if we missed a bus and since Ubers are scarce, the 30 min walk was a bit long for her—but was fine for the rest of us.
The main issue we had was the poor communication with Mathieu. This listing indicates hosts responds in about an hour and this was absolutely not true for us. Prior to the trip, sometimes he would not reply, but since it was not time sensitive, I would just message him again the next day or 2, so it was not a big deal. However, on our day of check in, he said he would virtually unlock the apartment door so we could drop out luggage prior to check in time. I had given him an estimated time for this based on our bus arrival, but he did not respond to airbnb messages or phone call or text. The building entrance could be opened with the keypad code, and since it seemed secure enough, we decided to leave our bags outside the apartment door. 2 hours later, I received an airbnb message from Mathieu asking if “it is ok.” No apology or explanation. Thankfully, the luggage was there and intact when we returned that evening, so we did not dwell on this.
However, on check out day, the code to the apartment door malfunctioned and stopped working an hour earlier than scheduled. We went up to the rooftop for breakfast and returned just after 10 and could not get back in. I unfortunately left my phone in the apartment, but we used my husband’s phone to airbnb message/call/text/FaceTime the contact number, and phone airbnb helpline. Airbnb had no luck getting in touch with him. His wife finally picked up a FaceTime call just after 12 noon and let us in virtually. We lost 2 hours in Quebec City on our last day, which significantly impacted our plans.
Mathieu was very apologetic, and he honestly sounds like a nice person. He said the software had been having problems for about a week, they are on vacation and the network was delayed in passing our messages to them. I understand technology snafus happen, but I find it unacceptable for a host to not be available like that. If you are on vacation and have limited signal/Wi-Fi, it is your job to get back up and provide the guests with an secondary contact number. He said he’s very busy because he manages 40 units. If you tell people ‘let me know if you have any questions” (as he did the night before when I inquired about check out procedures), you just can’t ghost people like that the next day. After some negotiation, we agreed on some compensation, but sometimes time is worth more than money, especially when traveling. It was a bummer way to end the trip.
This was the sort of experience that makes me want to only stay in hotels in the future, or at least be more selective with airbnb listings, since I have had many other positive experiences. It seems like hosts that live onsite and rent out a room or cottage in their backyard, or maybe rent out their own vacation home have a different level of investment, and the experience is more genuinely personal (not just a business with automated everything).