Had booked this listing 2 months in advance because J's place is apparently always booked out. It must be good for it to be always booked no? I was so wrong.
J has more than 1 listing, so J is probably very busy managing all these rental properties full time. As a result, it went unnoticed that this particular listing in Wanchai, which was recently renovated, was not done properly. Mealworms started to infest the bathroom area. They come crawling out when you take a shower. Which is absolutely disgusting. We feel most vulnerable when we are naked. Add some worms to the scenario. Is your skin crawling now? Ours sure did.
We checked in at 3pm on a Saturday, discovered the worms at 7pm, called J immediately. She was having dinner. Only managed to come by around 830pm. We had a dinner engagement that we had to cancel because we were waiting for J to arrive. J arrived with her helper in tow only to verify the presence of the worms. J was quick to offer a full refund, but nothing beyond, even though we were clearly not comfortable to continue staying in the apartment. It was 930pm by then.
We called Airbnb for help, and Airbnb offered the same - full refund, and USD100 additional reimbursement. But the more important question of : Where are we going to stay for the night (And for the rest of the holiday?), was something no one wanted to address.
HK is an expensive city to be in. We were left stranded at 10pm at night with no where to stay. We were made to bear the consquences for an action that was clearly no fault of ours to begin with. From a user standpoint, this is really unfortunate. We have had good experiences with Airbnb, but this one bad experience completely overturns all the positives we have had.
1. Worm infestation, 2. Lack of customer empathy. 3. Little / No support for alternatives measures
The cost of Airbnb apartments is not necessarily cheaper than Hotels. So think about what you are giving up when you opt for Airbnb vs Hotels. Yes you may get a 'road less travelled' experience, but ultimately, when things go awry, Airbnb is definitely not going to help you. We have learnt a costly lesson. We will surely not consider Airbnb for HK anymore.