I’m not going to tell you not to stay at Yvan’s place, because that’s for you to decide. What I will say is that we returned the key and left as soon as we lined up a replacement place to stay. Am I annoyed that I paid $800 for a three night stay where I never even unpacked my stuff and was gone in an hour, yes, do I regret leaving and finding a different place to stay, no.
We are a family with two middle school aged daughters, and we’ve stayed in a lot of Airbnbs. Some are clearly lived in, some are more hotel like. Both have pros and cons. However in this case it was too much like staying on a stranger’s couch.
Yvan seems like a nice guy, and we exchanged a number of messages prior to arrival, but the apartment was not what we expected. The photographer of the unit deserves an award, because it looks great in the listing. In reality the apartment is beat up, and none of the furniture in the pictures is the same. The staging in the photos make the rooms look spacious, but the apartment is small and more realistically would sleep 3 people. On top of that, the fact that it felt that we were displacing a family with a young baby from their home, from their food (in the fridge), from their dishes (in the dishwasher), from their laundry (dirty in the bathroom), was too much.
We messaged Yvan and said we were going to cancel, and we left the key and walked out. Three days of arguing with Airbnb support was even more frustrating, and in the end we paid in full for an apartment we never stayed in.
Draw your own conclusions. Oslo is expensive to begin with, hopefully you don’t end up paying for two apartments like we did.
John