Writing this review makes me really uncomfortable and I was actually going to ignore the negative parts (compared to the positive ones) and not write any reviews but then Agnes kept texting me and asking for a 5 stars review!
All in all it worked out well for me and my family, but unfortunately we cannot forget the bad aspects of it... I will try to summarize the story here, hoping it will help towards improvements in communication.
"Being unreliable" is the first thing that comes to our mind when we think about our experience with Agnes.
We live 2h from Lyon and I work in Lyon, so I regularly travel there. About 3 weeks ago, Agnes contacted me (she had my contact and some life info through Couchsurfing) and mentioned that they have to travel to Portugal for 8 days and they are afraid to leave their house near Lyon empty and also the cats need to be fed, and etc. So she proposed to me to bring my wife and newborn baby and stay in their place for this period. She also has sent some photos from the house.
I talked to my wife and of course we found this a nice proposal: help for Agnes, a period without long travel to work for myself, a holiday for my wife and daughter in a big beautiful house
We agreed with Agnes to arrange this through Airbnb just for precautionary reasons as we don't know each other. Agnes then sent me a special offer via Airbnb with a little charge.
And here it all started:
- When we arrived she said there would be some Airbnb guests during the week but over the weekend we would be all alone!! Me and my wife were completely surprised to hear she has other Airbnb guests!?! If we had known this, we would have never accepted to come there with a newborn baby!
- The second day before their departure to Portugal she said there would also be a 3rd person joining for the weekend. Agnes presented it as a great thing because, in this way, we would have company and enjoy people around while for us the main reason to accept to help her was to be alone (especially with a baby).
- When I asked about this surprising situation, she said that in the meantime those people booked rooms and she couldn't refuse them!!
- We asked for a key so that at least my wife could lock the door when she needed to, but Agnes said there were no keys, it's safe and we shouldn't worry.
- Living in an unknown house and neighbourhood, sharing it with complete strangers with the house open 24/7, I asked her how I could leave my wife and baby with strangers and go to work all day!! She answered not to worry, however, if we are uncomfortable we can go somewhere else!! I did feel very bad hearing that!
- We were utterly surprised by the development of new things. We actually thought of traveling back home that night but then my wife said she didn't want to put our little daughter, who was not in her best mood, through the journey back. So we decided to take a risk and see how it would go with those Airbnb guests.
- Fortunately the Airbnb guests were all nice people who by the way also shared their story with us as following:
Apparently all of them, have booked rooms with Agnes in an apartment within Lyon center but then, with a short notice, Agnes told them that the apartment in the center has a water problem and she can give them rooms in this house which was almost 1h from Lyon center.
Well if Agnes had honestly told us this was the reason that she added new Airbnb guests in this house, we might have accepted the situation without problem.
Positive aspects:
- big house
- beautiful and calm, big garden
- nice outdoor swimming pool
- strawberries in the garden, delicious
One last thing: you took some photos of us and mentioned that you would like to use them for your business idea! And since we were not sure if you were serious or joking, we didn't say anything, but no please do not use our photos for any purpose.