This stay was good right up until it went spectacularly wrong on the last night. The apartment is lovely and with some additional cleaning of the baseboards would have been very acceptable. The location is good and very central to everything. Towards the weekend, the street noise at night can be very loud. For most of the week, the windows effectively mute the street noise when closed. Kitchen was well supplied and very nice.
A couple of nights into our stay the building front door would not open with the security fob. We had come home from a late dinner and could not get it to work. I texted the host’s agent seeking assistance. No response. A few minutes of additional trial and error, the door finally opened. I texted the agent to let him know that we were in. Again, no response.
On our last evening, a Friday night, we came back from dinner and found a street full of intoxicated young people. This time the fob would sound like it was releasing the mechanism, but the door would not open. We tried for several minutes, had some unwanted assistance from some intoxicated people. I texted the agent and he informed me that he was 130 km away and that he could not reach the host. I also tried calling the host. I also contacted the ‘emergency line” for Airbnb and they were unreachable and kept closing the thread.
We were now starting to stress as we both had early flights in the am and no way to gain entry to gather our belongings. The host’s agent texted us that there was nothing he could do and that we should press all the neighbors buttons until they let us in. We tried that and had a bucket of water thrown down on us. So we kept trying. Finally, a neighbor did come to our rescue. She had to go back and find a tool to use on the door as she could not even open it from the inside. She told us that the door is often inoperable. Thus far, Airbnb says they have been unable to get the host to speak with them in a timely manner about any sort of refund for our difficulties. And that since the host is unable to make herself available until May 16th, they have to close this inquiry. If I want to pursue this further, I need to go to a different area of Airbnb and file another complaint.
This is the first time I have needed customer support from Airbnb as most of my past stays have not had an issue that needed their help. I