STAY AWAY.
The original flat that we rented had on the one hand a strong smell (a combination of sewerage and humidity) while on the other hand it was poorly maintained. Indeed, there were several things that were broken or didn’t work properly. For instance, the wall of one of the two bathrooms was fully covered in fungus (even the wall was inflated due to it). All three wooden doors were somehow broken meaning that all of them needed to be dragged in order to properly open or close them and one of them had a broken handle. So, we contacted the host to let him know the problematic conditions of the flat. He offered to send someone to fix all the broken things but as there is no safety box in the flat we told him that we do not give our consent for someone to come inside the flat while we are gone as we have our passports and cash in there. Given this situation, the host offered to change us to another apartment. He sent us the link to the new flat (which was looking nice and clean), thus we accepted to move to this new apartment. We called him on the phone to agree on the time we would meet at the new place so he would give us the key (to all this, we had to pay for two taxis to transport our stuff and had to cut part of our city tour in order to change places, in fact, the whole move packing, waiting and unpacking took us over 2 hours of our 2.5-day stay in Madrid!!!).
Second, once we arrived at the new place at the agreed time (14:15hrs) we were left waiting in the sun outside the building (with all of our luggage and no place to sit) for over half an hour until the host showed up with the key. Moreover, while inside the building and on the way up to the fourth floor, the host informed us that there was construction on the first floor (a thing that was not communicated from the beginning when the change was offered). As you can imagine at this point we felt like it was not worth complaining again and we believed that we wouldn’t hear the noise from the fourth floor. However, after 15 minutes into the apartment and to our unpleasant surprise, we realized that the whole building was a huge construction site. Right above us there was banging on the floors and walls so loud that we could even feel the walls in the flat shaking and the vibrations on the furniture. So, for the past two days, we stayed in a flat where we could barely hear each other or sit, lay, and relax in any of the rooms given the constant banging/hammering. These two events disrupted our holiday and left us feeling ripped off, as we didn’t get what we paid for. We have documented (photo and video) the situations in both flats.
Moreover, a situation that left us feeling unsafe about the host’s company is that they have their own app (MIT HOUSE app) which we were forced to download in order to check in. We believe that this app violates data protection laws and personal privacy and bypasses what Airbnb does. For instance, this app asks for a photo of all guests’ passports and the scanning of each guest’s face! We could not open the first flat’s door if this process wasn’t completed. We use Airbnb for a reason and do not understand how Airbnb allows the hosts to force Airbnb users to download an additional and unwanted app on top of forcing them to give their face and id to an outsider company. I wonder if Airbnbn is aware of this practice? Because we requested at the checkout for our personal data to be deleted from their app and we were told “I'm sorry, but this is not possible, as this information is necessary in case the police require it at some point.”
Additionally, there was no way to enter the first flat without using the app, and to use this app a guest needs to have a smartphone with internet. You might think that this is an important thing to mention to guests before their arrival, but there was no mention of this little but very inconvenient fact. I was the only one with a European SIM card and I ran out of battery, so we had no access to the flat when we first arrived! The solution was to send one of my family members to walk around the city center to get a Spanish SIM card so we could get into the flat. We wondered how other guests have had to deal with this situation or why is this system even in place. A foreign guest that doesn’t speak Spanish or English and who has no battery or internet data faces a really hard time entering the rented Airbnb.