Before we arrived Gaylord hasn’t responded to any of our messages, which we found quite odd. The instructions for check in where given very late (a few hours before check in time), so we got a little worried about the whole situation. We expected Gaylord to meet us himself - because the itinerary said so. Instead of that we got two codes - one for the main door and one for a key box. That part went smoothly though.
The apartment appeared dirty, especially the floor and the kitchen. Because of the lack of responsiveness from Gaylord, we decides to clean it ourselves (had to buy cleaning supplies since there was none). We told Gaylord this and asked for a refund for the cleaning fee we had paid - he did never answer to that request.
The first evening, when we got home after a long day in Paris, we found that the code for the main door did not work. It was midnight and we had nowhere to go, so it was a really big problem (of course) that we could not get in to the yard, where the apartment was situated. We tried to get in touch with Gaylord many, many times (both trough Airbnb and WhatsApp) but without any luck. After a while we contacted Airbnb support to find a solution - but found that that also was really difficult. We ended up wandering around for more than an hour in a neighborhood that is quite dodgy at night, which felt very unsafe. By a really lucky coincidence another resident at the building needed to get in around 1 1/2 hour later and could then let us in. She told us, that we needed a key brick to get in after app. 10 pm. She also told us, that this wasn’t a new thing.
The day after Gaylord wrote us and told us, that he was not aware. We found that really weird, since he told us, that he normally stayed there himself when he was in Paris.
We spent the whole day writing back and forth with Gaylord trying to find a solution, not a very nice way to spend a vacation. He ended up leaving the key brick at a coffee shop, so not there either did we get a chance to meet him. We really wonder if Gaylord is even a real person - we have been given many different stories for example about him first being on a business trip in another country for our whole stay (that was why he couldn’t meet us himself), but later the same day he said that he was in Paris. It makes no sense to us.
We ended up spending way to much time on communicating (or trying to) about these issues with both Gaylord and Airbnb, that it ruined more or less two out of five days of our trip.
So all in all not a very good experience renting Gaylords place.