**Buyer Beware** Host tries (and succeeds!) to get guests to pay for necessary home repairs. We’re heavy Airbnb users who’ve stayed in over 40 places and received/given good to stellar reviews (check for yourself). This is the first bad review requiring issue we’ve had. The problem wasn’t that the key broke inside the lock, locking us inside the house during a holiday week. It’s an old building, old lock. The locksmith thought the lock was over 100 years old. The problem is that the hosts didn’t provide any assistance, we had to find a locksmith on our own with limited French AND WE HAD TO PAY 2500 EURO for the replacement. As of this review, they have refused to reimburse. The hosts believe our insurance should pay. This is inaccurate because it is not our house & it wasn’t an accident. The key/lock broke because it was old/faulty like so much in an old house. Airbnb has found that we should be reimbursed by the host and even gave us a coupon covering half the cost because the hosts have refused.
Hopefully nothing goes wrong but if it does you won’t have help and you could be stuck with a 2500 euro bill. If you care to read the details, they follow:
On our first night, we turned the key to lock the door from inside and the key broke off in the lock. We were locked inside the house. We contacted the host and were basically told, good luck let us know how it goes. It was challenging to find a locksmith over the holiday. Once we did, he had to climb up to the 2nd story, through a window to get us out. It took him a full day to fix the lock (where we could not leave the house & lock the door). We were required to pay the locksmith at the time. Although the cost seemed expensive to us, after a google search we found normal lock replacements cost about 1700euro in Paris. Considering all the factors, we were glad we found anyone who could get us out of the house. It was a safety factor as well as an inconvenience. It was time to replace the lock and unfortunately we got stuck with the bill. In our judgement, we would never stay here again because it’s an old house and we don’t want to be on the hook for their necessary home repairs.