I have been using airbnb since 2014 and this is the worst airbnb experience ever. Our family visited Oamaru to see penguins, we booked 2 houses and this is one of them. The house is located near the penguin colony and well decorated. Unfortunately, the problem was the attitude of host. When we arrived at the house, the cabinet was dusty, so I wiped it with disinfection tissues, they got all black. I sent the pictures of the tissues full of dirt right away to host telling him the house was quite dirty, the response I got was shocking, “I do not accept that the house was dirty and could not have possibly produced this level of grime on a tissue. If you had an issue you should have contacted me immediately rather than cleaning yourself which I find particularly confusing. I will be contacting Airbnb as I do not believe your complaint is genuine or fair. If you are dissatisfied with your choice of accommodation I would welcome your cancellation. Thank you.” I didn’t cancel the reservation as I would have nowhere else to stay for the night, but it was really upsetting to have a host who blamed his guests for cleaning the house and challenged them who found the house dirty. There is truly no point for guests to make this up especially when we were not even complaining nor asking for any claim but only to give genuine feedback for host to improve. The reply we got was rude and unpleasant. This is really unfortunate if a host could not take negative feedback. Despite not having a single apology, the most shocking thing was that after we left the house, the host claimed that my tissue wipes had damaged his expensive wooden dining table and complained to airbnb for a compensation, this is really unreasonable as we had never used the table at all. Luckily we have taken photos of the house before we left so we have proof that the house was left in good condition upon checkout. But this issue had ruined our mood for vacation.
Besides, there were 2 bathrooms in the house, but the 2 showers could not be used at the same time as the water pressure became so low that no hot water could be supplied.
We were glad that we only stayed in Oamaru for one night.