I booked Stephane’s place for a 7 night stay, but ended up staying less than 24 hours and cancelling the rest of my stay. I had a tough time staying at Stephane’s place, as heating was restricted and even turned off at night, making it an extremely cold apartment to live in. We were not allowed to move the heat higher than 21.5C (70F) in temperatures as cold as -12C (10F). Normally 21.5C (70F) would be very warm, but the insulation at Stephane’s place is incredibly poor, so cold air easily travels in, making it hard to retain adequate heat in the dead of winter in Montreal. Even wearing multiple layers, my family and I were still freezing.
The night that my family got there, we had tried to adjust the smart thermostat ourselves, before realizing that the temperature was restricted. I asked Stephane to turn the heat higher, and later noticed that he had locked the smart thermostat so we were unable to use it. We woke up at 7am to an extremely cold apartment with -12C (10F) weather outside and were still locked out of the system and unable to adjust the heat. When I asked Stephane again if it would be possible to turn the heat higher, he let us know that it was not possible due to the heating system he had. He then said he would adjust the temperature for us on his end, but couldn’t go much higher. Throughout this exchange, we were also not offered additional blankets and there were none provided in the Airbnb.
I guess the thermostat then started malfunctioning, and this is when Stephane got extremely rude and accusatory toward my family. He blamed us for the thermostat malfunctioning, when in fact we had not even touched it at all since he locked it on us the previous night. I tried explaining this to him but he kept persisting and attacking us for his thermostat malfunctioning. He didn’t try to come take a look at his own thermostat to identify the issue, which I would’ve happily obliged to. He then told us this wasn’t the place for us and basically wanted us to leave. Obviously given his demeanor and the circumstances we also no longer wanted to stay so we requested a refund and left within 30 minutes, leaving his residence clean. Hours later he begins harassing me through chat messages, accusing me of setting a passcode to his thermostat and demanding that I give him the passcode. I tried to explain to him multiple times that I did not even touch the thermostat after he was the one to lock us out the first night (furthermore I honestly had no idea how to even use it, plus the system was in French). He then blamed us for setting the temperature too high, as now he was unable to access it. I pointed out to him that he was the only one ever controlling the temperature throughout our stay, and he finally stopped harassing me.
His attitude and accusatory demeanor made it difficult to continue our stay and negatively impacted our trip. As a result, I would not recommend this Airbnb to anyone. There are many other stays in the area with equally competitive prices and amenities.