About a week before we were due to arrive in Amsterdam we received three or four messages from the host concerning our check-in time. We had received others before this, however they appeared as automatic messages, and did not respond(This was our mistake, of course). A few on this occasion appeared to be automatic messages, however there were a few more after which were quite panicked and regarded our expected check-in time. Alex said that he had planned a trip to Germany and that he wouldn't be able to check us in and that we would have to pay a 25€ service charge for somebody else to wait and check us in. It was still a week before we were due to arrive, and we did not feel we needed to provide a check-in time this soon. While it is not Alex's fault that we did not respond to his messages initially, we found his responses quite blunt, and had a lot of emphasis on how the situation "was not his fault". At no point did we blame him for the situation, and we paid the charge for our check-in, which was within the times provided on his page, as he had to get somebody to wait for us.
The accomodation and ammenities were all up to standard, and it appears from his reviews that Alex is a nice guy and a thoughtful host. Perhaps we caught him at a bad time, but we felt his communication with us was quite rude and unnecessarily panicked.
Thank you for providing us with your home Alex.