I am a student that wanted to stay at this place with my family for a good month, however, after arriving, we noticed the place to be dirty and unclean. We noticed that the ceiling of the washroom it was coming off and it looked really unappealing. The worst part was that the building this apartment is located in was under heavy renovation, and the elevator wouldn't work properly when we arrived. Also, both A/C inside the apartment had a lot of dust inside with coins and old food, which is very unsafe for the lungs if turned on and breathed. There was random drawers placed in the closet of the property too. The toaster was also dirty and had food crumbs left in it, with other kitchen appliances being dirty (including the stove itself).
We sent videos and photos to AirBnb and they were not pleased with that they saw, however, because it's after check-in, you as a customer become completely powerless as to what u can do due to AirBnb's awful policies that is one-sided. We asked for a refund as it's only been 1 day since we saw the place for literally 10 minutes. We left immediately and didn't even bother bringing our luggage. Guess what? We had this case open for over week with very confusing communication between AirBnb, the host and us the customer. We were told to provide video and photo proof for potential refunds and had probably the worst experience in Montreal because of AirBnb. Worst part is the host gets defensive about the elevator being "fine" and the fact that this is normal. We simply wanted a refund and wanted to move on from day 1. Because there's no way we are paying nearly 3800$ for the condition of this place, it needs to be clean and done BEFORE arrival. The irony is that we were told by the the host Julio to check-in a few hours after our official check-in time because he has to clean to place. Which clearly, according to our photos and videos provided to AirBNB support, was not properly clean.
We offered the host to pay for 2-3 days of stay and that he could refund the rest of the money, instead he completely ignores us and decides to contact Airbnb and provides a very unfair offer of keeping 2000$ and giving us the rest back. We then offered 1-week offer to pay and that we wouldn't even bother leaving a review. Then he offered us another place to stay which was very far from city and definitely not ideal for us so we had to decline. So the final offer we got is that he gets to keep 2000$ and we keep 1800$. How is this fair? It's a very unprofessional offer and unfortunately we were forced to agree as we are pretty much powerless due to the run-down cancellation policy that gives total power to the host. Mind you, we didn't even stay at the place, we open this case literally like 2 days after checking it out while at our hotel.
We explained to AirBnB that we were on a tight budget and would like to maximize the refund. We are still glad we at-least got a portion of our refund back considering that we were at the mercy of the host for the decision. We appreciate that he at-least gave us something back, but that's a ridiculous offer considering we only saw the place for 10 minutes and left.
Again, I do not want to blame everything on Julio, because I sincerely believe AirBnB could of done more on their part to help us but were completely confusing in their line of communication. We couldn't even get a hold of a supervisor over a phone. So this could also be mostly AirBnB's fault.
To this day, we are struggling finding a place to stay from the 2000$ we lost. The impact of this negative experience is felt way down the line now
I highly advice anyone to ALWAYS ASK to check the place before check-in next time, or else you're totally powerless and you can end up losing thousands of dollars. Please beware, I hope the host can consider being more generous towards his customers next time.