Okay so I will try being brief but if anyone needs anymore information, do not hesitate to contact me.
Let me start by saying that this was one of the worse experiences I have ever had, the host is a complete liar and tries every opportunity to extort money from her guests. If you think you are saving money by booking this place for quarantine you are not, between the extra money she took from me and the booking which I made for 22 days (total 1225 + 250 cad), I could have rented a luxurious apartment downtown. So her main argument that you won’t find anything else this cheap falls appart. Trust me I would not send my worth enemy to this place, search for elsewhere.
- Firstly, when checking in I was made to pay 250 cad in cash for apparently (covid loss protocol) this fully violates airbnb laws as any transaction should be done through their services, however she did not follow that. This alone should have been a huge red flag but since I was at first still in quarantine I did not have the option to cancel and leave since I had already given my address to arriveCAN, furthermore, her strict cancellation policy meant I would only get 50% of my money back. This is the basis of her scam, and as I will later explain, she does this to every guest to my knowledge.
- I quickly realized I wasn’t the only one in this case. Two other guests that later checked were also charge 250 cad and 350 cad extra in Cash for covid fees. You may now ask, what are covid fees ? Well after I asked her she explained “Covid fees are for her to give covid guidelines, take out the garbage, collect your deliveries and do the laundry”. Now besides these covid fees being mandatory and hence breaking airbnb rules, it is simply a lie. One of her house rules was that the garbage had to be taken out by the guest so I did it every night without her help. The laundry service I was charged 20$ extra even though it was supposedly included in the covid fees ? Lastly, packages such as food and groceries order came straight to the door and I did not need her help for that. Lastly, her “covid guidelines” were merely simple stuff such as “wear a mask”, all stuff that anyone coming from overseas travelling through the airport already knows. Fair to say none of the “covid fees” were actually helpful in anyways.
- The room I was checked in was not the one I booked, I rented a room with “huge balcony” and was placed in a basement room.. One of the other guests booked a “room with large windows” and was placed in an illegally subdivided room with no windows whatsoever, the only natural night he saw during his 14 day quarantine was through the bathroom window. This guest told me when he arrived at night in this room with no windows, he was on the verge of crying. This is not only false advertising and immoral but it also violate fire safety laws in Quebec (03-097). It’s almost comical how she includes specific items when describing the rooms that end up not being there at all. She also tried scamming one of the guests by claiming he had damaged the wall however luckily this guest had taken a video when he arrived for his safety. This saved him money.
- Her listing is also 100% illegal, under Quebec all listings must display their CITQ dossier number and this wasn’t done. A government is also required to be displayed even though during covid it can be paper.
- She also made a few racist comments towards another guest from Pakistan. She kept making references to how “Indians people do that… Indian people are good at that… etc…” Many times she said stuff such as “I have hosted many Indians I know you like doing … “. This not only made me feel uncomfortable but was very annoying for that guest who reminded her multiple times that he was not from India. She will of course try to deny this however I luckily happened to be recording when she once made such a remark, so I have video evidence.
- She tried to intimidate us into giving up by many ways. One of her tactics was when the third guest checked in, she told us that it was her brother. Surely enough, that guest had absolutely no relation to her and ended up being one of the guests I talked about in this review, he was scammed out of 250 cad. He was also upset and uncomfortable that she went around telling us lies about who he was, no host should do that to a guest ever!
- The unit is infested with rats, I found multiple rats in my room, other guests found rats in their room too and I even spotted one in the middle of the living area… After contacting her about the matter she was very slow and took 3 days to even come check it out. She kept denying it despite me having a video of one of the rats…
- When one of the guests announced that he may wanna extend his stay by a few days, she actually blocked the stay from being extended through airbnb and had him give her extra Cash. That way she not only got extra money for his extension but most likely got away from airbnb fees and taxes on that transaction. Again this is a full violation of airbnb regulations.
- She made me deposit money by Cash despite me asking her to have this done through airbnb services. And surely enough when it came time to checkout, she said I would not get the deposit back until a minimum of 2 business weeks after leaving. This is