A beautiful apartment but a very poor host experience.
Our party of four (myself, my partner and my two elderly parents) arrived at Vasco's apartment around midnight with the key code instructions we had been sent (this is a self-check-in apartment). When we entered the code, the door would not open. We tried this multiple times before contacting our co-host (Sofia). We called Sofia and nobody answered. After thirty minutes, we contacted Airbnb who told us they would attempt to contact her directly. When this failed we were told to try and find a hotel for the night. As we began looking, we were contacted by Vasco (the apartment owner). He thought we were entering the code incorrectly, so we sent him a video to show that the system wasn't working. This took another 40 minutes. Vasco explained that he was not in the country and did not know why Sofia wasn’t answering. He offered to book us a hotel for the night which we agreed to. An hour passed. He told us he could find no hotel rooms available in Lisbon. My elderly parents were becoming distressed in the hallway. Exhausted, we accepted Vasco's offer to put the four of us into a one bedroom apartment he owned near the airport for the night. Vasco ordered an Uber for us and we arrived at the apartment around 4am. I put my parents to bed and my partner and I slept on a small fold out sofa-bed for the night.
Sofia contacted us in the morning. The lock issue had been rectified and we could return to the apartment. We messaged Sofia and asked her to book us an Uber ride back to the apartment. She didn’t as she was waiting for Vasco’s approval. Vasco eventually told us that he would reimburse us for the Uber ride if we retained a receipt. We did that and finally accessed the apartment. I called Airbnb and explained what had happened and we were automatically refunded for our first night's stay.
The apartment is beautiful and the location is great. Graca is a wonderful part of the city. We very much enjoyed exploring the neighbourhood and eating in the local restaurants. However, our trip was mired in stress again when we contacted our host with the Uber receipt. We were told the first night's refund included the Uber trip (it did not, we had not mentioned the Uber trip to the Airbnb representative). We were then told that they felt the refund for the first night was "enough". I explained that we were promised our taxi ride would be refunded, and if it wasn’t I would have to contact Airbnb directly. Only then was the refund given.
I was in two minds about whether to leave this review, as Vasco later explained he was away on his honeymoon. However, if you offer a service to people, you MUST have systems in place to help guests when things go wrong.
This was my parents first and last ever Airbnb experience as they do not wish to encounter a similar incident again. I wish Vasco all the best, but unfortunately this was not an Airbnb experience I will remember fondly.