Our stay was not pleasant. I’m glad that others have had different experiences while staying in Rosalia’s unit, though due to the events described below that occurred during our stay, that was not our experience.
The check-in process was easy, Rosalia’s communication prior to our stay was good and the unit was very clean albeit small, though unfortunately none of that mattered.
After our first night, we were awoken early in the morning by construction that was happening inside the building as well as VERY loud screaming children from the children’s theatre right next door that made it impossible to sleep, take a phone call, work on the computer or even think. The entire morning and afternoon there was loud drilling and hammering and on top of this, there were workers that were just below the unit who are peering into the unit and a front gate open to the street which workers were coming and going from which did not make us feel at ease with our privacy or safety. We contacted Rosalia to alert her to the issues, and when she did not have a resolution for us, we explained that we simply could not stay there 2 more nights, and hence booked 2 nights at a hotel so that we could sleep and work without these concerns, and vacated the unit that afternoon.
We asked Rosalia to make this process easy for us (since we had a very difficult time already) by refunding the remaining 2 nights of our stay (minus the cleaning fee). We are former hosts, and so we gave Rosalia the opportunity to resolve the matter directly with us. Rosalia acknowledged the issues above, though refused to offer any refund. We then filed an official claim with Airbnb who ultimately ruled in our favor and refunded 2 nights of our stay due to the video evidence that we provided. This partial refund did not cover the expense we had of booking a hotel stay last minute, and certainly did not account for the awful 1-night stay we had in Rosalia’s listing, but at least it was something that Airbnb did to try to make things right.
NOTE: This is the very first time in over 7 years of staying in Airbnb units all around the world that we have ever needed to leave a unit early or request a refund.
The 1 night in the unit was a real nightmare, but what was more distressing was how Rosalia was unwilling to resolve things directly with us after we had suggested a more than fair resolution. In hindsight, we should have noticed the red flags that the host had only joined Airbnb in 2019 and was not a Mexico City local, though we have learned our lesson to book in the future with hosts who have been hosting for more than a few months and have been living in the listing’s city for years, not months.