The bad experience we had with the Kina Cottage listing of AirBnB that we have booked for 25th and 26th of October 2020.
We arrived at the listing around 7.30 pm of the 25th and we were shocked to see how badly the listing was maintained. As soon as we got inside the house it was smelly and dusty odour and was filled with dead insects (cockroaches) and live spiders and cobwebs in many areas. The primary amenity we looked for was the washing machine and it was not accessible due to the dirty room where it was placed had cobwebs all over. Since we had wet clothes from the beach, we wanted to use the washing machine primarily and it was not accessible. And hence we had our wet clothes stained and it was damaged.
As soon as we got disappointed with the house we called the host immediately to raise the concern about the filthiness and smell and the lady who attended our call was not able to assist and let her manager call us who was Jarrod.
Jarrod did ring us eventually and we did discuss our issues and he asked us to send pictures of our concerns and by the time it was around 9 to 9.30 and we weren’t able to settle by then and lost our precious time and peace of mind. Seeing the pictures and our concerns he did ring us back and told us that these issue or concerns we raised are expected with that kind of house. We would not rather no one will be happy to pay such an amount and stay in a dirty place I assume. The host was not willing to accept the fact that we did raise our real concerns and wished not to stay there .
At the very moment we asked host to arrange for another accommodation as we all were not at all happy to stay there in this listing then Jarrod said he won’t be able to come or send staff until Tuesday to assess the listing and he cannot arrange another accommodation and have left us with no option other than to stay there.
We did clean the house ourselves to some extend so we could sleep that night. The argument what Jarrod said it it’s an old house and hence it will have smell and dead insects and cobwebs and we as guest should be staying in this environment. Is this what is expected from AirBnB, we pay the amount to enjoy our stay and are the guests expected to stay in a smelly unclean house.? is this the AirBnB culture? Is this the AirBnB standard?
He argued that the listing is an old BACH or cottage? we were never against that being an old house but would expected at least a minimum neatness and safety so we can have our stay peacefully.
The next day we were all ready to start our trip and someone called Rob came in and held us back for an hour or more. We were explaining our concern and he was not willing to hear or accept it. He was also talking around the lines that the house is old, and we have to accept the fact that it will have bugs insects and cobwebs.
if we had another option, we would have stayed somewhere else. So overall the stay at Kina cottage was the worst and we got very bad experience from the host and yes never expected AirBnB would list such an unclean house , we lost our peace of mind and time which spoiled our vacation.
Now I would like to highlight how bad experience we had with Kina Cottage and thus we request a full refund for what we have paid for the loses we had booking this listing via AirBnB. (we have all the proofs and chat and call transcripts that we can produce if needed)
1) The house was smelly and could feel the dust all over. The carpets were not vacuumed for ages. The host admitted the last clean was on 7th of October when the previous guest checked out and its bizarre that the listing is not cleaned just before the arrival of new guest and it was untouched for nearly more than two weeks which is insane.
2) Kitchen had spider webs on the utensils, dead bee, and live spider, the kettle was too dirty, microwave was not working. The utensils were old and when we tried to boil water in the pan it had a weird taste, we had to use the stove for boiling as the kettle was dirty.
3) One of our friends had a rash on her arm while we were in the listing and not sure if this was due to some insect bite.
4) The bed linens were smelling dusty and we all were uncomfortable sleeping on them.
5) The rooms and the hall weren’t vacuumed since long as it seemed and when we tried to convey this to the host he mentioned it was cleaned top to bottom on the 7th of October which was two weeks prior to the arrival of the guest. He also argued that his operations manager had visiting and accessed the listing two days before which we think was not the case seeing the dead insects and cobwebs around.
6) The other listing you mentioned was the BBQ grill which was extremely dirty and we couldn’t use it either.
The stay at Kina has totally brought loss to us by all means
We lost our peace of mind, our precious time, our energy in cleaning the house, our dress got damaged as we couldn’t use the washing machine, couldn’t use the grill, kettle and microwave too… lost our expectation about AirBnB and it’s a shame that AirBnB would list any indecent houses.
Finally after a lot of conversations and follow up, we got only 25% of refund which is nothing when compared to