I booked Balcon de Frida for myself and two other friends for a long stay of 3 months, and it is a real shame to have to write how bitterly disappointed we were.
Initially, we were quite excited to stay at the Balcon de Frida, as from the pictures it seemed like a nice house, in a relatively good location. Before we booked, I messaged Aida about potentially providing us with an oven and and she was quick to meet our needs by installing appliances or offering easy alternatives such as getting the neighbour to do our washing. She even offered us arrangements for tours which were organised before our stay.
However, upon arriving at the house, we were already slightly disappointed. The area is not as central as the listing makes it seem, and there are plenty of other listings which are much closer to the centre of Coyoacan. The house was also slightly disappointing: it was clearly not made for long-lets, as the kitchen was very small, and the shower and toilet were very uncomfortably separate and small, with the door handles of both also being difficult to open and close. The house was also in poor conditions, with cracked floor tiles throughout the house, mould on the ceilings of the smallest bedroom, damaged walls and dirty floors; however, having just moved to a foreign country we did not want to cause a fuss. Within two weeks however, we began to have more and more problems.
First of all, we had huge issues when it came to the question of cleaning the house. The host, Aida, was incredibly frustrating in her approach. The housemanager/cleaner operates a cafe next door and is in charge of the cleaning. Aida told us after we made our booking that cleaning cost and she stated that it should be done every week. I was a bit in shock at first, as we have stayed in at least five other Airbnbs throughout Mexico and we have never been told that we have to pay a cleaner separately from the Airbnb fee. Nevertheless, we were quite forgiving, and as we had already spent a considerable amount of money on renting the Airbnb we could not afford to clean every week. Instead, we suggested that the cleaner come every other week. After a few days, the host told us that the cleaner would charge double to come every other week - in effect, we would have to pay to clean every week or the cost would be the same but we would get cleaning less often. I again stated that we could not pay so much for cleaning, and instead suggested that we would clean ourselves. I also contacted Airbnb for advice over the situation as I was unsure how to approach the cleaning issue, as it states that hosts cannot spring hidden costs on the occupants; unhelpfully, Airbnb contacted Aida over the situation and she became very hostile after she knew I had contacted Airbnb, sending me messages weekly telling me that I had to clean the house or else I would get a big fine from her at the end.
I had to repeat several times that we would clean the house thoroughly at the end of our occupancy. The cleaner/house manager, who had always been very nice to us and I’m sure was just doing her job as instructed by the host, constantly let herself in without any warning and proceeded to take photos of our dirty dishes and other things in the house and send them to the host. This resulted in ever-increasing messages from the host about cleaning. The neighbour also came in unannounced to sort out the water and water the plants as requested by the host. Given how long we were staying, and that one of the main benefits of airbnb over hotels is privacy, it was appalling to us that we had to suffer this incredible invasion of privacy.
Furthermore, we experienced a few other shocking issues with the host. First of all, the host told us at the beginning not to throw toilet paper into the toilet as the pipes were very narrow and susceptible to blocking - which we of course agreed to. Nevertheless, despite the care we also took to not let food go into the kitchen sink, it was frequently blocked and the kitchen floor flooded almost every morning as a result. I promptly informed the house manager and the host, and I was only met with the response that I should try pouring boiling water down the sink. I tried this and also bought drain unblocker and neither solved the issue. After a month of this issue, we went away for two weeks, and again requested that the sink should be fixed. Nevertheless, the host proceeded to blame us and took no action to try and solve this issue. Therefore, for 6 weeks of our 3 month stay we had to live with a non-functioning sink, and a constantly flooded kitchen floor, which was not ideal to say the least. I contacted Airbnb over this issue, and they again contacted the host. In response to me contacting Airbnb, Aida (the host) decided to file a complaint against us officially and ask us for £200 because we ‘blocked the sink’ and left the house dirty despite us not even having left the property at this time.
The shower is also very poor. The water pressure constantly did not work, and we had to ask the house manager to come round and sort it our for us. Moreover, there was frequently no hot water, and the last straw was that one of the taps broke, as the nail had completely rusted. Instead of fixing the tap, we were instructed to place a piece of paper underneath it, which worked for two days and then the paper disintegrated. We were not at all impressed by this, although in isolation this would not have been a big