Where should I begin? I booked Brian's place with 3 of my friends for 3 nights. Instead of discovering Madrid, we spent our time making phone calls and getting frustrated. This is definitely not the first time I book an airbnb, but this has been the worst experience.
First, when we arrived at 9PM (as expected), we sent a message to the host then called him (because no one answered our message). No one was here for the check in. When we called, a woman answered and said that they thought we cancelled our reservation (even though we didn't). She said we couldn't stay at the appartment we booked that night and that we will have to go to another place they have. This place was much smaller than the one we booked, and in a terrible neighbourhood.
We were still fine with it and the lady said we will move back to the other appartment the next day at 3, and that we had to leave the actual appartment at 2. After almost begging her, she accepted that we keep our luggages in the first appartment until we moved out. We arrived at the appartment we had originally booked at 4. The cleaning lady was still there, there was dust and garbage on the floor, and the appartment wasn't ready (no bed sheets, dirty towels, not even a full toilet paper). We had to waste our time waiting for the lady to finish.
All this time, Brian the host was never reachable, and the women working with him were incredibly unprofessional and rude (they even hung up on me when I asked for Brian's personal number).
That's not all. The next day, we woke up at 10 and there was no hot water to shower. We waited for 3 hours for someone to come and fix the problem, wasting our time and energy. Finally, we decided to leave the appartment and book a hotel.
Brian, if you want to be called a host, at least have the decency to show up when there's a problem.
Despite all the positive reviews, which made me book this place, we've had a terrible experience and I do not recommend it. I understand that problems happen, but the way everything was handled was simply unacceptable.