Unfortunately this is the first time we have ever felt that an AirBnB booking (or anywhere for that matter) was somewhere we actually didn't want to stay. It was so bad that we opted to lose our fee for two a night booking and to pay again to stay elsewhere in Wellington.
The positives:
Gerald - our host's father - gave us a lovely welcome to his home and we enjoyed chatting with him over a coffee. He was a real gentleman. It was with huge concern for his sake that we considered staying as we did not want to cause any offence to him by leaving. It's so difficult to say to someone in their own home that you don't feel that you can stay, and we felt sincerely awful about leaving in that respect.
The negatives:
The room and communal space is not fairly represented by the photos. Since they were taken there is a lot more clutter in the living space (especially the conservatory) and the small room that we had booked had far too much furniture in to be able to accommodate two people.
There is now a desk at the foot of the bed, making it almost impossible for two people to manoeuvre around the room. It was cluttered with dolls, keychains, cotton wool buds, Kleenex tissues, a disused lamp, headphones, a cluster of books and a television.
The fact that there are no photos of the bathrooms speaks volumes, we did not want to use it due to clutter/uncleanliness. Whilst we understand that it is a communal space, there are so many half used toiletries around the sink that there was no room to put a toothbrush down. Not at all inviting.
In our room there were dead bugs across the windowsill, a dirty sock next to the bed and an unemptied waste bin.
We like to consider ourselves budget minded travellers (we moved to a hostel which was so much cleaner) and we certainly do not expect luxury; a number of these issues we can swallow and get on with, but all on top of each other proved to be too much. We fully appreciate that AirBnB showcases homes and not hotels, but when paying $100+ per night plus cleaning fees, we would expect a better standard.
Up until we complained, we had good communication with Catherine, who is currently in Sydney. However, after messaging her details of our concerns and reasons for leaving, we received no response or acknowledgment whatsoever which we felt was pretty poor.
We had been sympathetic to the fact that she is so far away and not able to keep the property up to the standard that it had previously been. We've read so many good reviews about this listing that we thought she would be shocked by our message and feel some responsibility. I have no idea how she felt, as 6 days on (at the time of writing) we are still awaiting a response.
At first we felt bad for leaving (and we still feel sincerely awful that we left Gerald's home without acknowledgement), I now feel angry that we booked a place with misleading photos and haven't even been offered a refund of the cleaning fee - which has not been spent on cleaning.