Our experience with Patricia and patio polanco was awful.
I have stayed in Airbnbs all over the world and am a super host myself and I have never experienced the kind of unwelcoming communication as I did here. I have also never left a bad review; but I feel I need to be honest about our experience so as to deter any other family from having a similar experience.
There is almost too much to write but I’ll try to keep it useful and concise:
- the place is not kid friendly, even though it states that it is. Patricia (the co-host we dealt with while staying there) brought us over a crib (charged us $50 USD for it) which was of dangerous design and our baby immediately got her legs stuck in it (we did not use it), but nothing else in the apartment is remotely kid friendly. There is very very little common space where a family could relax together easily. There was no high chair. And anything we asked for we were met with a derisive and annoyed tone. Patricia did bring over some toys, but my daughter had no where to play with them expect in the corner of the bedroom. We also were forced to lug our double stroller (along with our 2 children who are not walking yet) up and down 2 flights of stairs every time we out because the building owner wouldn’t let us keep it in the plenty spacious entry way.
- The apartment itself is FULL of useless items making it feel a bit hoarder-ish. I had to move a bunch of stuff off surfaces around the apartment just so we had space to put our things.
- An example is the kitchen cupboards were filled (literally no space to put any of our food or things away) with unfunctional multiple items like 4 dish drying racks or 2 full sets of dishes or 3 full sets of silverware, but lacking items that you would need to actually live there like Tupperware or knives that could cut a potato or dishes and sheet pans for the oven. When you used the oven the stove would get so hot you couldn’t even touch the burner dials. The water filter leaked constantly so to get water you could drink you’d have to fill it and fill up other jars and pitchers or else it would just leak out all over the kitchen counter and make a mess to clean up.
**We used our bath towels to clean this up before we figured out where all the water was coming from and then got chastised for “leaving our towels unusable”
- everything in the apartment felt dingy and cramped and old and on its last leg; like it was all about to break.
- I asked to have weekly cleaning done since we were supposed to stay there for over a month. In the binder left for us on the table it said this would be 500 pesos; Patricia tried to charge me $50 usd, claiming that it had “changed” and the binder was out of date.
- ultimately our stay here was terrible and almost traumatic for our whole family. It was largely responsible for us cutting our trip 2 weeks shorter and has cost us literally thousands of dollars in airline change fees and in that we needed to find another apartment because we simply could not make this one work for our family at all. And the fact that the hosts refused to work with us after so many issues or offer us any sort of refund and then refused to even try to rent it for the period of time we were supposed to stay there and at least offer us a refund for that, is really really sad.
We are hosts of 4 Airbnbs ourselves and have stayed in Airbnbs all over the world and I have never had as bad an experience as this one.
As hosts we would always offer a guest that had this much trouble some sort of refund and help or at the very least sympathy and apology and kind words. We were treated like we were rude and asking for way too much. Even told “we can’t accommodate you every time you change your mind.”
I would never recommend this apartment and I hope the hosts take this as impetus to clean up and fix the apartment and do a big overhaul of all the stuff in it.