DO NOT STAY HERE. (unless you want to pay an extra 1,300 euros!!) I want to begin by saying I have never written a bad review before because I have never felt that the situation warranted one. This past week we stayed at Leah's apartment in Paris. We were four guests visiting Paris for the first time, and we decided to stay at Leah's even though she had no reviews. When we arrived, the apartment was unkempt and there was a large bag left by the cleaners in the middle of the kitchen area on the floor with all of the bed sheets and towels. When I contacted Leah, she told me to put the bag in the closet because it was not supposed to be there and admitted it was unprofessional of her. The beds were unmade and we were missing sheets, towels, and pillows. When I contacted the host again, she told me to look in the bag I had put in the closet, where all of the sheets and towels had been misplaced. We ended up having to make our own beds and tidy the apartment ourselves, we were still missing a duvet cover and we only had 3 pillows for 4 guests. I had mentioned several times to Leah that we were 4 guests and it was listed on the booking. Despite these inconveniences, we continued to stay at Leah's apartment because it was the only accommodation we could find.
WORST PART!!!
The host, Leah, only provided one key for the apartment, despite the fact that there were four of us staying there. Not to mention that the door locks automatically when it closes. On our last night in Paris, we were leaving to go to dinner around 6:00pm, and accidentally left the key inside the apartment as we stepped outside. The door quickly swung shut and locked us out of the apartment. I immediately contacted the host, expecting her to arrive with a spare key to open the door. However she responded that, "there is no solution", and then said she would call a locksmith. We asked if she had a spare key and she said she did, but was not near Paris. We offered to go get the key from her multiple times or to meet her somewhere to get the key, but she continued to reply with vague answers, saying she was too far away. Her replies were so infrequent that we had no other choice but to look into other options. Hours later, she sent us several quotes for locksmiths from 180 euros to 290 euros. As a host, it should be her responsibility to handle this inconvenience and the charge since she was not nearby to provide the spare key or have a backup plan for such a simple issue (and only provided one key for four people). She repeatedly refused to help us find an affordable option, so we had to research and call multiple locksmiths until we found one who told us it was going to be a flat rate of 149 euros. When he finally arrived around 10:30pm, he determined that the lock was too complex and had to be completely replaced at the cost of 1,316.70 euros. The locksmith called the host and asked her if she could stop by, which was when she finally admitted that she was out of the country on vacation in Israel with the only spare key. Her only message said that, "costs are high because it is very late"; had she mentioned this earlier we would have known to look for a locksmith at an earlier time, and maybe would not have been charged so much. While she had offered to call a locksmith for 180euros originally, the cost would have still been much more no matter the locksmith because the lock was too complex and had to be completely replaced. We had no choice but to pay because we had to leave the next morning, and all of our belongings including passports, laptops, and suitcases were inside the apartment. Not to mention the difficulty in getting ahold of her on the phone meant that the locksmith was not able to start for an additional thirty minutes. Leah was overall very rude and extremely unaccommodating and unprofessional.
The undue stress and inconvenience, as well as the additional charges which the host refused to take responsibility for, were unacceptable parts of our stay. Once the door had been opened around 11:45pm, we had to wait several more hours until around 2:00am for the locksmith to bring back and install the new lock. We had a flight the next morning for which we had to leave at 5:00am, resulting in a complete loss of sleep. Our stay was completely disrupted as was our next day. The charge for changing this lock came out to be more than our entire four night stay which was $1,120.13. I have been an Airbnb guest for two years now and have even stayed long-term [7months] in previous bookings. I have never once received a complaint and have several good reviews speaking to my integrity and respect of the property as a renter. Leah is a new host who has little experience and did not have a back-up plan for this (highly probable) situation.