Unfortunately this was our worst experience with Airbnb in all those years. First, when we arrived at 8:30 pm the apartment had not been cleaned after the previous guests. The person who was waiting for us found that out when we all entered the apartment. He was very apologetic and by the time he sorted out someone to come and clean and they actually came and were done cleaning it was 11 pm, so we had to leave our stuff there, go out and wander around with a 6 year old after a long full day trip until then.
Ok, we are in, let’s take a shower and go to bed! What wasn’t our surprise when we saw large, forest type mushrooms growing just outside the shower in the master bathroom!! Our 6 year old comment: they are just decoration, mommy, mushrooms grow outside! No, they were real!
We then find out that night that half the power plugs in the master bedroom don’t work, so we have to shift furniture around in order to plug the fans (there were 3 in that bedroom), a couple of which also didn’t work properly. We find dust everywhere where we moved the furniture.
In the morning, we realized the toaster was broken. It shut down the power to the entire unit, we had to reset the breaker. The coffee maker shot boiling water at whoever was around it once it finished brewing the coffee pod every single time (it did hit us in our legs the first couple times), so we had to keep our 6 year old out of the kitchen when making coffee for all 5 of us, as it would have hit her in her face.
So we contact the administration and they say they will send someone the following day to check it. I say no, we need someone today to remove the mushrooms and bring a new toaster and coffee maker. They send someone in the evening to check if the toaster was really broken! The power shuts down again. The guy believes it’s not working. He cleans the mushrooms, is very apologetic and leaves saying he will bring a toaster the following day. They do that the next evening, ignore the concerns regarding the coffee maker, and by then we had found tiny black mushrooms growing inside the shower, where the grout is gone and there is mold growing.
So yes, the view is beautiful, the locations is great, and it’s not easy to find a 3 bedroom apartment in old European cities. However, this place needs serious maintenance and raised concerns about fungus (mold) born illnesses and fire safety. The fact that they minimized and even ignored some of our concerns is worrisome. Unfortunately we’ve seen this happening in Airbnb once the company grew and some properties went from being rented directly by the owners to being rented by management companies. People keep renting them in whatever situation they are, so there is very little incentive to keep the places well maintained. We never got an apology (other than from the guy who was waiting for us and actually saw the things that were not working and removed mushrooms). All they did was to offer us a late check out!! Why would we want to stay there any longer??