This was my very first negative airbnb experience in over dozens of guests and a small handful of hosts. But first, let me share the positive elements of my experience: I booked very last minute, and received prompt confirmation from Sarah. The room looks exactly as shown, and my fears about the sofa bed being uncomfortable were completely unfounded as Sarah's guests sleep on a very thick, very high quality mattress. The location of the flat is good (ten minutes away from the tourist scene, less than ten from the train station, and very quiet - we slept with the windows open and weren't awakened by any street noises at all). The bathroom is modern, clean, and quite large. Decent water pressure and constant temperature are prominent in the huge shower.

There were only two bad things about staying with Sarah, but they were stress-inducing enough to color our whole experience negative. I would not stay with Sarah (at any listing she might have) again. After her initial quick response confirmation that we could stay with her, she became completely uncommunicative. Text messages, WhatsApp messages, and even a phone call went ignored (I had been trying to find out if we needed to bring linens and towels, and if our arrival time fit into her schedule or if we should plan on occupying ourselves upon arrival and checking in later). After nearly two days of no answer from Sarah, I wrote her a message over AirBnB explain my frustration in trying to contact her. A few hours before our flight was to depart she wrote back to say that the phone number with which she had registered for AirBnB wasn't her number. (?!) Alright, so she hadn't been ignoring me but rather not receiving my messages.

Over the 46 hours we were in Venice and the half day before which we spent in Berlin, I tried contacting Sarah at least a half dozen times (at first, to send her my arrival information and let her know my flight had landed, and later, to try to resolve the problem we had) and I was always unsuccessful. An important, time sensitive WhatsApp message that I wrote her had been read and was ignored. I have never experienced - not with AirBnB, not with any other paid accommodation, not even with Couchsurfing - such unbelievably intentionally poor communication. At first the communication was missing due to a careless mistake - the wrong telephone number being listed - but after that got cleared up Sarah was as uncommunicative as before.

Lack of communication wouldn't have been such a big deal if we weren't surprised with a very clever bit of false advertising: The beautiful, cozy eat-in kitchen, which was featured prominently in Sarah's listing in a half-dozen professional, AirBnB-certified photographs, the reason we chose her listing over other listings... Was not included. Apparently one buried sentence in her listing-description warns guests that the beautiful kitchen from the professional-photos isn't included. What a clever trick.