"You were rude." "You were absolutely lack of empathy." How would you feel if your host threw such words at you? How would you feel if Maya, the host who you have never met or talked to before, said those things to you?
I had trouble in check-in. No key was prepared, and I couldn't enter the apartment. I contacted Alma (co-host), who had sent me a check-in message. She texted she would arrive in 20 minutes but actually arrived more than 45 minutes later (without any notification of the delay). She also didn't know which key was for the room, and in the end, I didn't get into the apartment until almost two hours after my arrival. This was not a pleasant experience, but I was not upset about it.
What disappointed me is that I could NOT have smooth communication. Alma neither knew the apartment nor spoke English. Maya might know but was unavailable throughout my stay. English is available according to the listing, but it was misinformation (as Maya was unavailable). Throughout my stay––for example, when the power went out––I had to communicate with Alma through machine translation.
I made a cancellation request because smooth communication with a (co-)host is important for a pleasant stay. As you can guess from the check-in trouble, Alma was not familiar with Airbnb. (Indeed, she started it right before my arrival.) Not only was there a language barrier, but Alma (co-host) was unfamiliar with Airbnb. In fact, she had started hosting at Airbnb right before my arrival. (I am not criticizing Alma. Everyone is a beginner at first.) I was disappointed in the host, Maya, for irresponsibly leaving all work to Alma and misinforming me with her listings.
But, the response from Maya was full of VERBAL ABUSE!! Below you can find her words and excuses that she made in another message.
1. "You were rude."
How could Maya say that when I never met her or talked to her? Was I rude to Alma (at the check-in)? No, I was not. Indeed, after Maya sent this message, Alma texted me "You didn't hurt me in any way, just misunderstandings I think that was all and maybe a misunderstanding with Ms. Maya" (machine translated from Spanish). To ask Maya how she could say that, I replied, "As you were not there, you might have misunderstood." She admitted, "I wasn’t there in your interaction with Alma" but made NO apologies.
Summary: Maya said "You were rude" without any reason and never apologized for that.
2. "You were absolutely lack of empathy."
Again, how could Maya say that? I didn't understand why she was talking about empathy. In the message, she wrote about Alma's recent troubles in her personal life (marriage and children), which I do not detail for her privacy. I didn't know why these troubles are related to my Airbnb stay. Maya also wrote, "[Maya and Alma] are in an asymmetric relashionship of power [...] we can't measure our mistakes whit the same value. That’s why I told you that you were "absolutely lack of empathy", cause empathy is not just a matter of understanding feelings and other people emotions, is, over all, an understanding of social realities and the inequalities that results of that." I was surprised at this message... Is there any reason that justified her verbal abuse? Also, how could I know the asymmetric relationship between them? I replied to Maya, to ask how it is related to my empathy and how I could know Alma's personal troubles or the asymmetric relationship between them. Maya didn't answer this question.
Summary: Maya said "You were absolutely lack of empathy" without any reason and made all sorts of incomprehensible excuses.
Maya used many other offensive languages, but as this review is already long, I refrain from elaborating on them.
If you are still reading this review (sorry, it is so long!), please take a look at other guests' reviews about Maya and Maya's reviews about guests. She usually receives positive reviews, but she sometimes wrote aggressive words to guests. Of course, I have no idea about what happened between them. However, even in such cases, she could have calmly refuted those reviews based on what had happened, but Maya used abusive language that attacked their personalities or characters.
To sum up my review, I would NOT recommend her.
P.S.
Upon check-out, I had to return the keys to Alma, the co-host. Again, she was late for more than 30 minutes without any notification.