Please read the following carefully- BLACK MOLD ONSITE AND CONTINUAL CONSTRUCTION ONSITE AND NEXT DOOR:
My partner and I came to live in Cape Town for a few months and enjoy life down here. Prior to staying at Dale's place, we stayed at another Airbnb in Greenpoint and had a perfect time.
When we arrived at Dale's place, things began to go downhill. It ended up being one of the worst stays I've experienced in my travels around the World. Here are some of the things we experienced:
-- BLACK MOLD = After a little over a month of being there, we noticed the AC stopped working properly and it became unbearable to sleep at night. We reported this to Dale, along with a ton of other issues which I will elude to later , and he had an AC technician come to the property. When the technicians arrived, they opened up the AC vents upstairs and all the filters were covered in BLACK MOLD and DUST. It appeared that it had never been cleaned since it was installed. This makes sense as the AC technicians also said that they could not clean it that day because they needed special equipment to reach the unit which they did not have access too.
- My partner and I breathed this stuff in nearly every night for a majority of our stay, We had nearly every symptom of Mold Toxicity that there is and discovering this was both validating to explain our health problems while staying there and also so we now know how to work on a treatment to get better
I sent the photos to Dale and he did not acknowledge the situation, he simply said that he would let us out of the Airbnb rental early and refund us for the nights not stayed.
Fortunately my partner and I had a friend here in Cape Town that let us come stay with them which has allowed us to start healing and recovering from our stay at Dale's house.
When I called Dale after departing, Dale also asked me to NOT write a review, which I'm assuming because he did not want other people to know about this.
My partner and I requested a full refund for our nights stayed there so that we could apply this toward our medical bills and treatment that we would have not had to deal with if it weren't for staying here. Dale refused to refund any of our money from our stay
CONSTRUCTION ON SITE
- In our first couple days there we woke up to heavy drilling and banging below us. We then discovered that Dale's parents (who actually own the property and live above) were renovating the garage. The drilling and sounds were intense and unbearable as our room was right above it. We were NOT told about this prior to our stay.
- The construction on the garage carried on for weeks
CONSTRUCTION NEXT DOOR:
- There is massive construction underway next door on what appears to be a multi-million dollar residential project. This is very disturbing if you're trying to enjoy some relaxation and or work from home as both my partner and I do.
- It occurs to me that this construction will be going on for at least 6 months to a year
- We were NOT told about this construction at all
POOR INTERNET:
My partner and I both work from home and nearly every day, several times a day the internet would freeze for extended periods which would be so bad that we had to stop working. I brought this up to Dale and he would blame it on the load shedding however this happened even when load shedding was not going on. We did not have internet problems at our other airbnb, or our friends house.
- We had asked Dale prior to staying here too if the internet was strong enough and he confirmed it. This was definitely not the case.
- I WOULD NOT recommend staying here if you need to work remotely as it is not conducive for that among everything else I've listed.
NO HOT WATER
- We requested on several occasions for the hot water to be fixed downstairs so we could wash our dishes. This was never fixed and made it impossible for us to properly use the kitchenette to cook and clean up after ourselves
I rarely, if ever, leave a negative review as I've had some incredible stays around the World, however there is so much that went wrong living here and our health has been damaged from our time here. I do NOT recommend anyone stay in this property as BLACK MOLD is a very toxic substance to be subjected to AND the noise and disregard from the Landlord to rectify things was truly disappointing.