TLDR: Do not stay with this host. She left a family of 4 freezing and without hot water on New Years Eve. Story below:
I’ve stayed at many Airbnb’s but never in my life have I had an experience as bad as this. We checked into the room and it was freezing cold, fair enough since no one had been there, but after an hour of the AC blasting 30 degrees and the room not getting any warmer we knew there was a problem. We, my fiancé and two kids, decided we’d wash our faces and head out to Asakusa for the evening ( it was here we noticed that there were only three towels prepared for the four of us) but after running the water for a while we noticed the water wasn’t getting warm. We tried all the taps and none of them were heating up. We contacted the landlord and went out to Asakusa assuming the problem would be solved by the time we returned. Spoiler: it wasn’t. After hours of standing in the cold pressing the outside gas button and testing the taps the landlord decided the water heater wasnt working and there was nothing they could do. They suggested a not so nearby sentou, are you insane? It was already super late at this time and the kids were in no state to go out. The next day the landlord called and low and behold there was nothing she could do. She discusses us just staying in the cold, hot waterless apartment for the duration of the stay but without hot water we could barely get ready in the morning let alone spend our whole stay there!! The whole holiday was wasted from this point on as what should have been essential family bonding time over this New Years was instead stolen by a landlord offering subpar business hotels with inadequate sleeping arrangements instead of anywhere of substance. Our first conversation of the day was at 10:30am and 9 hours later at 7pm nothing was solved and the landlord still insisted on pushing subpar locations instead of actually finding an apartment of the same quality of which I had originally booked. Frustrated I had to result to calling customer service directly in order to resolve the problem all the while the landlord insisted on sending subpar locations.
The landlord had decided that since the apartment was just over 30,000yen she wouldn’t be willing to offer a replacement of any higher cost, the problem is that it bring the 31st of December (and with myself having booked the apartment weeks prior) all other apartments of the same quality and living arrangements were already taken and what was left was more expensive.
As a landlord your BASIC job is to make sure the BASIC amenities are up to standard. The towels were lacking, the house was an icicle, there was no hot water at all.
While we made the most of our trip this was a constant stress for three days as I had to abandon my family and worry about basic living conditions for the day where we should have been enjoying each others company.
The airbnb customer center was also not quick to act with myself having to wait an hours between phone calls to receive any updates about the issue! Each time the representative would simple repeat what he had said the time before sticking to a weird customer service script. Is this really the service of an international company? In the end no one got back to us until the following morning, 18 hours after the first phone call after we had already checked our early from the airbnb to head to a sentou to refresh.
Quite frankly I’ll never use Airbnb again, from my fiancé’s reaction to this ordeal neither will she (this is her first ever interaction with Airbnb). For those wanting to risk it all and stay at this apartment, go for it. But make sure you’ve built a tolerance to the cold, cold water and incompetence.