BEWARE OF THIS HOST. By far the worst experience I have ever had with an Airbnb. First of all, check in was difficult as the door was hard to open. Stelios was difficult to reach, and did not make an effort to ensure we checked in properly. Once we got into the apartment we noticed some issues with cleanliness - both the garbage in the washroom and kitchen had trash in them, there were hairs in the washroom drains, and the toilet was not cleaned properly (there were some stains). To make matters worse, when we tried to take a shower the drain was clogged with bodily fluids, grime, and clumps of hair. We tried contacting the host, who was yet again very slow to respond. He informed us that he would fix the drain in the morning since he “lives two hours away and didn’t want to make the drive” that evening. The shower and toilet are in the same room so if the washroom was flooding with water in order to use the toilet we would have to walk in the water - due to this, we had to unclog the drain ourselves. This was a very disgusting experience. We did not complain up to this point, as every review I give on Airbnb is positive and we tried to look past these issues.
The terrace was indeed pretty, with a nice view of the acropolis. The room also looked exactly like the pictures, and it is decently conveniently located about 2km from the main city centre. However, the bed/pillows were extremely stiff and uncomfortable.
Following this, some issues with safety arose. The listing contains both the address of the building and also the precise location of the apartment - it is the only apartment on the sixth floor with a giant Airbnb sign on the front door. I am travelling with a young woman who felt extremely unsafe in this environment, since it would be very easy to find. The terrace is also connected to the roof of the building, so anyone who goes up there can see you sitting on the sofa or look into the apartment through the door because there is nothing separating the terrace space from the regular roof except for some stones on the floor.
After two days of minimal communication and a frustrating experience, the host reached out to us. Not to ask how our stay was going, but to request a “favour” from us to let a potential buyer in whom he wanted to show the house to. He said he had someone coming to see the place at 10:30 in the morning, and asked us to show them the place. This was extremely odd for us and made us very uncomfortable for various reasons. 1) we are guests paying for a place to stay, not house sitters there to help someone with their real estate. 2) it is unsafe for us to allow someone into our place, with our valuables, who we do not know.
At this point, we got very upset and cancelled the rest of our stay. We reached out to the host to let him know about our issues and experience. He was very unresponsive and rude. Accused us of trying to get a free stay, however we paid for an entire extra day prior to checking in by mistake and never complained about this nor did we request a refund for the time we did stay there - we only requested a refund for the time we would not be staying there.
Amid this conversation, we informed the host we would be leaving and booked a taxi. As we were leaving we could no longer see the code to the lockbox and told the host we had to leave and that if he did not reply we would leave the key on the door- he took over 10 minutes to reply with the code, but our taxi was waiting for us, so we told him we had to leave and could not wait and thus left the keys under the mat. He proceeded to threaten us and say he would find us at the airport with the police and we would “pay for what we did”. He threatened us numerous times claiming he is warning us that if the key is not in the lockbox we would face the consequences. He also made discriminatory comments, saying if I am from Canada then he is from Zimbabwe- I am not sure how anyone should take this.
I have stayed at many airbnbs and have never given or received a review below five stars. There are much better places to stay in Athens and much kinder and more hospitable hosts. Throughout our stay I felt scared, uncomfortable, and disgusted. this host should be ashamed of himself.
TLDR:
- Takes long to respond
- Clogged shower drain; says will fix in the morning which isn’t very helpful for people traveling 8 hours and want to unwind; unclogged myself.
- Threatens us and leaves a racial comment. Quite verbally abusive when you have a complaint.
- Tells us we must show the Airbnb @ 10:30 am to a client of his who wants to buy the place - we are not his real estate agent, we are PAYING GUESTS.