Overall, we are very dissatisfied with this listing. Our group is fairly flexible and we don’t like to be high-maintenance, but we found many of the issues listed below to be both unhygienic and hazardous.
Host and Hospitality
* Messaged the host multiple times asking for info; didn’t respond for 2 days.
* Complained that we didn’t select a check in time even though the listing said 3pm (when we planned to check in). Host delayed check-in over an hour on the day we were arriving, which forced us to wait in the train station.
* Host was rude and claimed he had an important meeting 45min after the check-in time, leaving us a very small window to navigate a foreign city, find the location, and check in.
Amenities and Hygiene
* Shower head is broken, forcing you to hold the shower head the entire time. We went back and checked the reviews again after experiencing this to find out that this has been an issue for over 2 years.
* The picture of the shower on the listing shows a fully-functional shower head.
* The shower itself is filled with black mold, which is both disgusting and a health hazard.
* Shower door is broken, allowing water to spill on the floor making it very slippery. Shower mat is unusable as it gets drenched after each shower.
* Similar to the review above, the sheets and towels are stained and the pillows are disgusting.
* Multiple lightbulbs are out.
* Vent in bathroom is disgusting. Piles of dust accumulated on ledges immediately above pillows.
Safety
* Door locks from the outside. A member of our party was trapped inside the apartment for hours, even though they had a set of keys with them.
* This is both a huge fire hazard and resulted in this person losing almost a full day of their Barcelona vacation.
* Host made no mention of this and specifically requested that we lock the deadbolt when we leave.
* Staircase leading up to the apartment is very old, with many cracks, tiles missing, and very slippery, resulting in one of the members of our party slipping down a flight of stairs. No elevator, so guests must climb the 3+ floors multiple times a day. Obviously, this is unavoidable, though we should have received a warning that the stairs could be a hazard, especially before carrying all of our luggage up them.
Sadly, the apartment is in a great location and has a lot of potential, but the numerous glaring issues put a strain on our vacation and cost one of the members in our group to lose almost an entire day in Barcelona.
These issues should be easy to fix, but clearly, the host has made no effort to do so as illustrated by the review from over 2 years ago.
We spent much of our second night in Barcelona seeing if there were any other AirBnB locations available, and even considered getting a hotel (which we try to avoid at all costs). Ultimately, we decided to wait it out as we didn’t want to lose any more of our money or vacation time moving to another location.
While it seems like there’s no way to get a refund for this experience, we urge AirBnB to do whatever it takes to ensure the issues we experienced in this listing are corrected before anyone else has to experience the same things we did.