This is going to be a long one, but let's do it to help people not going through what we did.
We were 4 guests willing to spend a few days in Madrid. As we would arrive in the city around 9AM on Monday, we booked the apartment since Sunday to have the possibility to check-in in the morning. This is the starting point of this story.
A few days before our arrival, we got an e-mail informing we should download an app and do our check-in there. That was new to me since I always use Airbnb as the main communication channel between myself and the host.
I decided to write them back to ask about the check-in and got informed that we should go to their office instead of the apartment. This is already abusive in my opinion, but they went further and stated that we could only do this as of 10:30AM, because the office does not receive guests earlier.
I told them we had booked an extra day to be able to access the apartment in the early morning, and to that I was informed that the best they could do was to receive us at their office at 10:30AM. We then decided to change the begin of our booking to Monday and check-in at 15:00.
On Monday we arrived at their office around 10:30AM to leave our luggage and walk around Madrid till 15PM. At the office, I was asked for the forms we should fill in using their app, to which I stated I would not use any foreign app to provide them sensitive data and that we should stick to Airbnb as a formal communication channel. After a long discussion on data privacy and information security, the man "serving" (I put " " because the was all time rude to us) us accepted my ID and made our check-in on his PC.
Then the most surprising occurred: As my wife asked to use the toiled to put on her contact lens, the employee responded she was not allowed to use it. He did it in a very unpolite way and even after clarifying she would only use the washbasin he denied her access to the toilet. what do you reader thin about that?
On leaving their office, we were again advised that the apartment would be not ready for us before 3PM. Let's move to the next chapter.
We arrived at the apartment around 5PM and the cleaning personnel was still there. They finalized the cleaning as we arrived, but the whole floor was still wet so when we stepped in it got all very dirty. We contacted the office again and they informed us that the cleaning lady told us the floor was still wet and it was our fault if we nevertheless step in. Now I ask myself: Is that a proper answer? what should we do? wait two hours outside till the floor was dry? We felt like being obliged to clean it, but we didn't.
This was by far my worst experience in Airbnb in almost 10 years membership. Really disappointing.