I am sorry to say that my stay at Roberto's unit was the worst Airbnb experience I ever had. I will try to provide a detailed explanation so the public can better understand why ***I DO NOT RECOMMEND*** staying at Roberto's units.
The TLDR or Summary: The electricity at the apartment was shut off. I asked for financial compensation due to the loss of power. The host Roberto lied by saying the entire building power was shut off. The biggest problem I have is that Roberto appears to be lying to avoid paying any compensation for the loss of power. Once you cannot trust an Airbnb Host, it is over for me. More details below.
Details:
To be fair, I did not have any major problems with Roberto's units the first three of five days of the trip. Good location, safe, friendly doorman to the building, etc.
Problems began on Day 4 when my friends and I returned to the unit in the early afternoon. The power was shut off. The water was still working. I messaged the Co-Host Lucero (who I corresponded with since I reserved the Airbnb unit many weeks earlier) to let her know. I thought the power loss might be temporary and tried to be patient. Hours went by and there was no change. We also walked outside of the apartment unit. There are at least 5 other units in the building. No other unit lost power -- no one else came out to complain and there was light and music from other units. We asked the building doorman, and he said it looks like the only unit with power problems with our unit (which is actually two combined units). I later learned from Lucero that apparently the electricity company made a mistake and thought the electricity bills were not paid for and shut the power off. I have all of these WhatsApp messages if there is any doubt about what I am saying.
My friends and I wanted to be reasonable so we decided to "wait and see" if the power would come back up. We told Lucero we would go to dinner and hopefully when we come back the power will be back on. We left the unit for several hours -- dinner and drinks, etc.
We came back after the sun set so there was no light in the unit. Everything was dark. We could not shower in the complete darkness since that would be dangerous if we slip and fall. We could not charge our batteries. We did not have Wi-Fi. We were also leaving the next day and needed to pack our things. But it was very hard to pack in the dark. We wanted to use the light from our cell phone but we did not want to drain too much of the cell phone battery. Just imagine being in a foreign country without electricity--a basic need.
We found out later that one of my friends forgot to pack his medicine the next day because he left before sunrise. He believes he would not have forgotten it if the light were on. The next day, Day 5, I was the last one to leave the apartment around 11:00 am and even then the power never returned.
During this ~24 hour period, I regularly told Lucero that the power was still turned off, etc. I think she was trying her best to fix the problem. She also apologized for problem and said they would be able to financially compensate my friends and I for at least one night's stay.
The next day (Day 5), I left the apartment and proactively requested financial compensation from Roberto through the Airbnb Phone App (since he is the primary host, not Lucero). Roberto declined the request entirely. To be clear, I requested an amount that was more than the amount of one night's stay. When I requested the partial reimbursement, I explained to Roberto the loss of basic electricity was very stressful and I believed my requested amount was fair. I also said if Roberto disagreed with the amount, he could explain his reasoning. He could have counter-offered a lower amount. All these are things I learned for the first time since I've never had such problems with an AirBnB host.
Instead, Roberto rejected my request entirely and then said that he owed me nothing. He said that the electricity was shut off for the entire building. I was shocked to read his message saying this because I saw with my own eyes that the power was on everywhere else in the building. The building has lights on every floor in the open-air hallways and stairwell - those lights were still on. There are two large glass doors to exit and enter the building which includes an electronic pad and code -- that all worked so the power was on there. As I said above, we saw lights and sounds from other units for hours while we sat without power in our specific unit.
Roberto's claim that the power was shut off for the entire building was completely different from what his co-host Lucero said, too. I was shocked by Roberto's message but I still tried my best to be patient and asked him for proof that the power was shut off for the entire building. He ignored my request for proof.
He responded saying he is talking with other residents in the unit about the problem and has no connection to the problem I was raising with him. I found Roberto's responses unprofessional, unreasonable, and untruthful.
I consider myself a very reasonable and fair person. If the power was off for a few hours, or even most of the day while we were out touring the city, I would not have a problem at all. But the effect of losing electricity in this case was serious because of the timing. And the co-host (without me raising the issue) proactively stated that "of course, we