When we arrived at this place we were greeted with about 9 flights of stairs up to the apartment (it is mentioned it’s a walk up building but we somehow missed it before booking) . Then once we entered the apartment we were expecting a modern apartment (as mentioned in the listing) we arrived to a rusty shower, broken sink tap in the bathroom (when you turn it on the tap screws off and then you need to screw it back on to turn it off), paper thin windows where you can hear almost everything outside (we even heard people talking on the streets), worn out furniture, a blind you need to manually roll up, and a pocket wifi (not a proper wifi).
I mentioned the windows to the landlord and he actually told me they were new windows…..they are actually original windows from when the building was built (I am from Hong Kong and I know what they look like) you can also see rust on the windows. I also mentioned that we couldn’t sleep due to all the cars we can hear and there is a basketball court right next door (you can clearly hear the players and their shoes squeaking). There is a garbage truck that comes at about 2:50 am and you can hear it moving forward and stopping multiple times it also makes loud squeaking noises. We got woken up at least 4 times during the night and wasn’t able to sleep for a few hours after. My partner and I both work very early in the mornings so staying at this apartment for the 7 nights we booked was not going to work (we also need strong wifi for our work) the wifi was not strong enough for us to even watch things, it would continually load every 5-8 minutes. The landlord said that he never had a problem with the wifi that it’s not his fault for the noise outside ( it’s not the noise that’s the problem it’s the paper thin windows.)
We tried to get our 5 night refund back as we could not stay there since we could not sleep and need strong wifi for work (it is not mentioned on the listing it is just a pocket wifi) but due to the policy on Airbnb and due to the landlords choice we only got 3 nights refunded. On top of that we got charged a higher rate of 880$ a night rather than the initial 792$ a night we paid (for 7 nights) which was also the landlords choice (Airbnb said). In the end we took what we could get and cut our losses, even though we were misled by the listing Airbnb was on the landlords side since these issues were considered “minor issues”. I found that so shocking with all the things we had to deal with.
I hope you will not have to deal with what we had to.
I would not recommend staying here but if you’re interested I would suggest visiting the apartment before booking it so you don’t lose money and have to deal with all the hassles of Airbnb, moving, and sleepless nights.