A Picturesque Nightmare “Un cauchemar pittoresque”.
I’ll preface this by saying that we’ve tried to remain objective within our overall review, despite being extremely unhappy with our interactions with the host (Guillaume) and the fact his dishonesty and negligent attitude led to over 700 Euros in extra expenses on our trip. I’ll get to that shortly…
Guillaume met us at the apartment and gave us a pleasant overview of the apartment. Overall the place was very clean & up-to-date. There is a cute area for having your breakfast and overall the place is large enough for 2 people to comfortably enjoy. Negatives: The bed mattress is extremely soft (preferential opinion) and we were surprised to find that only 2 rolls of toilet paper had been supplied for a 1 week stay. We purchased our own and left more than what was provided.
As you can see from the pictures, it’s really the view that gives this listing the WOW factor. We thoroughly enjoyed being able to see the ocean, coastline and part of Biarritz. One important thing to note is that several pictures that are used in this listing are from a different balcony in the building. In particular, the 2 pictures of the feet/shoes up with Villa Belza (White Castle looking building) in the background are NOT taken from your balcony. You can still see the Villa but we felt the use of these images are misleading.
The location is excellent and very close to the beach & restaurants. We loved the short walk to Les Halles de Biarritz for either groceries or meals. In regards to the onsite parking, there are only like 5 parking spaces in front of the building which can be used by anyone in the building. There were times we had to park further away. The host does offer access to a paid parking lot about 5 minutes away from the building.
And now the nightmare…
We checked out and drove to Bordeaux for our flight to Germany. I was devastated to realize I had left my Passport and Canadian Permanent Resident Card (PR Card) in a drawer at the apartment. I was able to still fly within Europe with other documentation, but I would need to have the PR Card in order to return back to Canada. We called Guillaume and asked him to send the documents the next day through 2-3 day Priority/Express mail and include a tracking number. We explained how It was important for this document to be sent right away as the following week was Christmas and we had limited time at our next destination before we had to start of journey back to Canada. We also mentioned we would be happy to compensate Guillaume for his time.
He confirmed he would be sending it the next day, and when I followed up on the Friday, he said that it was sent. Over the next couple days I asked for a tracking number however Guillaume would avoid answering the question. He would ignore phone calls and would not share details on the shipment. I was notified by AirBNB Support on Sunday that Guillaume had sent a payment request, which I payed immediately. At this point I asked AirBNB Support to get involved in the conversation as I wasn’t having much luck getting straight answers.
We started hearing conflicting stories from AirBNB and realized that the documents may not have been sent when Guillaume said he did. We kept tying to communicate with Guillaume in order to find out if he still had the documents, and if he did, just to let us know as we would happily pay more to send the documents overnight/next day, or even change the delivery address to a hotel we were staying at in Paris before our return to Canada. No response. AirBNB said he was going to send us the tracking number on Monday morning, but this also didn’t happen. We received message that we would hear back from him in the afternoon but that didn’t happen either.
On December 26, after pleading with AirBNB Support to apply some pressure, we finally received a picture of the package, and were able to obtain a tracking number from it. After calling the postal company, they confirmed that package was mailed out on the Monday December 24, and the documents were sent by standard mail, and not express / priority as we had requested. Our jaws dropped. In addition, we had sent 40 Euros but the cost of the package was only 13 Euros. The package would not arrive before we had to leave to Paris.
To make a long story short (since this review can only be 1000 words), I paid to get a temporary passport in Germany, we flew to our Paris and were unsuccessful in getting assistance from the Canadian Embassy for a temporary PR card. The day before we were to fly to Canada, received notification that the documents were going to be delivered in Germany that day. I flew last minute back to Germany in order to get the documents. My mother had to drive 4 hours round trip to drop off the documents at the Hamburg airport hotel and then I flew on the first flight back to Paris, just to be able to make the flight to Canada. Over 700 Euros in extra expenses incurred (and it would have been more to reschedule my return flight instead).
This is my first negative review I’ve ever written, and I really wish it didn’t have to come to this but I want the host to understand the unnecessary stress and impact his dishonesty created for us. I take complete responsibility for leaving the documents behind however everything that came after could have been avoided if the host acted with integrity. I hope this review will be a valuable reminder on acting professionally when it comes to taking care of your guests, especially within the hospitality industry.