My mother and I booked and paid for 4 nights here, but only ended up staying 1 night due to the extreme cold in the apartment. The apartment has only 2 tiny heaters that only heat the area 4 inches in front of them. Thus, the apartment got so cold to the point we were sitting in our jackets with 2 layers underneath and were still freezing. I woke up coughing and feared this would ruin the rest of my trip. Our noses were both running when we arose in the morning. These living conditions are intolerable. This is a WARNING for any traveler to NOT STAY HERE IN THE WINTER AS IT IS FREEZING.
That being said, heating is not listed as an amenity for this apartment. I acknowledge that it was my bad that I did not verify that heating was an amenity. However, any reasonable consumer travelling from a more developed country, such as the U.S. or Canada, would expect heating to be as basic an amenity as a toilet, and as such, would not specifically check for such an amenity. Thus, I believe this is a fault on AirBnb’s part for not highlighting to the reasonable consumer that heating is not available. A notification like: “This is December and there is no heating, are you sure you want to book?” should be displayed before paying.
When we complained about the cold, the only thing the host offered was to use the extra duvet in the living room and nothing else. (Although after we checked out the next morning, he offered to buy a space heater.) He states that this is the way the Portuguese live in the winter. Yet, we stayed at a beautiful AirBnB in Porto 1 day before and it was perfectly heated - the host even told us to increase the temperature as it was cold outside. Moreover, to live in this cold to the point of getting sick does not seem like reasonable/normal living conditions.
Before going to bed, we called AirBnb to rectify the issue. They called the host to see if he would refund the days we would not be staying, but he refused. We fear that his lack of kindness and humanity (especially on Christmas Day) may cross over to other travellers staying here.
Due to this horrific experience, my mother refuses to ever travel with AirBnb again despite having stayed at several nice apartments earlier this trip. We hope no one else experiences the distress, discomfort and inconsideration of guests’ comfort as we did here.
On a side note, the apartment is noisy at night, so it is not for the light sleeper. Also, there are barely any extra plugs to charge devices - we had to unplug the night table lamp to charge our phones.