I was very disappointed with this Airbnb because the previous reviews were very good, however my experience was not the same and definitely not as I expected.
I will share my experience as it happened:
I booked this Airbnb (3 months before our trip) for 4 people from Monday through Friday. The communication was good at the beginning, I received a detailed message with all the indications for the arrival that same day, and one day before our arrival I received the same info on my phone.
Since I knew the Airbnb worked with a self check-in and the entrance to the apartment is allowed from 15h, we organized our day and luggage storage to be able to visit the city on Monday morning until around afternoon/evening.
However, around 15h I received a message from the host asking me at what time we would be arriving to the apartment. I explained that I understood it was a self check-in on arrival and did not have an exact scheduled time slot. He asked that it was preferable for him to know a time, in case we needed something as he works nights and will not be available to respond in the evening. It sounded very nice from him and at that point, we rearranged our plans and told the host that we would be arriving to the apartment around 5 p.m. He sent me a "thumbs up".
Just about to arrive to the apartment (17h20), I received a message from an unknown number saying "I am very sorry, but the cleaning in the apartment has not been done. Public transportation problem and because I live very far from Paris, I am on my way and will arrive in an hour from now. Please accept my apologies, is it ok for me to arrive in one hour?" (PLEASE NOTE that check-out is at 11am). Immediately, I shared the text message with the host and asked if it was normal. No response.
By that time, we were already in the apartment, everything was dirty (as normal, there were guests before us), I took pictures of how the apartment looked and sent it to the host. I finally received a reply from the host 30 minutes after my first message, I had to asked if he would check with housekeeping or what?? The host only replied, I'll get back to the housekeeping, and a smile emoji. NO MESSAGE with an "apology" or "sorry" for what had happened to us.
We were "locked" in the apartment until 19h, when the housekeeping arrived, because they HAD NO EXTRA KEYS to the apartment!!!!
This made us think that, in fact, the host knew about this problem, shared our contact number with the cleaning service, asked us our arrival time so the housekeeping arranged their schedule to match with ours and solve the problem with US. THE HOST DID NOT TOOK ANY RESPONSABILITY FOR THE SITUATION.
I was the one informing the host that the housekeeping had arrived and he only replied: "Thanks for the information. I hope it won't take 3 hours". We were astonished with this response and lack of respect to their guests.
We finally received the apartment clean, as it was supposed to be, at 20h30.
The cleaning was definitely not thorough, it was just "clean" and we believe that our sheets were not washed completely but just run through the dryer, because the sheets were the same as the ones we saw put for the previous guests, and because during the week we wanted to use the washer/washer and it didn't work. I asked the host if there was a problem with the machine, he never responded.
The situation itself was a shame. The location of the apartment is good, you are on a sixth floor, no noise and the view is nice. The kitchen is ok, however it needs new cutlery, none of the knives worked. The bathroom was ok, not much pressure in the shower. The bed and sofa be were fine.
As someone who has close family running Airbnbs we were very surprised by the lack of commitment and responsibility of this Airbnb. It was not the fault of the cleaning staff/housekeeping, if it is your Airbnb, you should be checking that everything is ok for your guests and not shrugging off the problem.
I guess the host's way of apologizing to us was to let us check out at 4pm, after we asked him to do so.