Quick points for those who do not want to read our story:
Was dirty/Horrible smell upon arrival (unused condoms left above the bed).
Little-to-no check in instructions.
minimal response from Philippe when issues were brought up. Denied our refund despite staying <1 Hr
Stay at the hotel on the same street! it is lovely, and they gave our room extra scents when we told them about our issue with the air BnB.
Due to a change of plans, my fiancé and I were happy to find Philippe's place on short notice (we booked the morning of our stay). However, upon arriving to the air BnB, we were immediately hit by a very strong smell of what appeared to be rotting vegetables. We were unable to locate the smell, but upon an inspection of the space we noticed that the rugs were not cleaned, and there were unopened condoms above the bed. We reached out to Philippe to express our concerns with the smell, but did not receive a response from him. The only check-in information was the key location and the code (no WiFi, checkout rules that we could see posted, etc.). We were able to find a great hotel on the same street (Hotel Saint-Paul), and after attempting to remedy the smell with incense that was in the Air BnB and candles, we chose to leave the Air BnB ~45 minutes later and informed Philippe we would not be staying. Later in the day, we requested a refund of our money, but Philippe denied our refund and only gave us 1 day back (~1/3rd of our payment). We had to reach out to Air BnB support to receive the rest of our refund.
In summary, I think the main issue was Philippe not having the place cleaned thoroughly prior to our stay. While it was short notice, I would expect if a host is unable to get their location cleaned, that they simply do not accept a booking request. Secondly, despite receiving messages from us at ~15:10 and 16:10 explaining our issues and subsequent leaving, the first response from Philippe was denying a refund request we had submitted at the end of the day. Would highly recommend staying somewhere else.