Our experience at Buho House in Valencia was good at first, but took a really bad turn for us in the end. We booked one of the rooms for two (the room was named “Catarroja”) for 7 days and found it quite pleasant at first with it’s little balcony, air conditioning and big shower. It was generally quite clean and there were only minor issues, such as the battery of the remote control for the tv being empty and the two mattresses of the bed drifting apart, when laying in the middle.
But then, on our second night, we saw the first of the reasons for our bad review - A big cockroach on the wall in the hallway (about 6 or 7cm long). We went back to the room and hoped for it not to enter our room and to be removed by the cleaning team.
On the third day, we saw it again on another spot of the hallway. We went out to see the city and when we came back in the evening and were hanging out in the room, another cockroach (smaller than the first, but still very unpleasant) came into the room from the balcony door. We managed to scare it away and to make it leave through the door again, but from then on started to get paranoid of more cockroaches coming in or being already in our room. In the same night while laying in bed, we heard a very weird sound from the wood boards on the ceiling. We calmed down and finally fell asleep.
On the fourth night, after being outside for most of the day, my boyfriend saw another very large roach on a wall in the community kitchen on the first floor. This one was even bigger than the first roach in the hallway on the second night.
Fifth night: The large cockroach in the kitchen was still there and as we were laying in bed, my boyfriend told me to step away from the bed and look up. I was immediately terrified, did as he told me and then saw another cockroach on the ceiling of our room, just above where I was sitting in bed before. We then proceeded to try to catch it, turning the room upside down at 1am in the night. We called one of the provided numbers of Buho House and were told, that there is an insect spray in the reception room and that the cleaning staff could take care of it the next day, which of course didn’t help us at all in that moment. After about 45 minutes of chaos, we finally managed to catch the roach with the trash bin and decided to not stay in the room that night. We thankfully were able to spontaneously book a room in a nearby hotel, packed our stuff and left.
In the end we spent our two last nights in Valencia in other hotels, because of the multiple cockroach incidents. We came back to Buho House on the 6th day, returned the keys, reported back all of the incidents and tried to get our money back for the 2 lost nights. The young man at the help desk was friendly and tried to change our booking, but was unable to change the booking for the previous night. He sent me a request via the AirBnB App to at least change the stay from 7 days to 6 days. The app showed him a price difference of 1 night, but the request I received had the same price I already had paid + a service fee, displaying the total price after the change request as even more expensive instead of cheaper. Of course we did not accept this request, as we wanted to be safe and let AirBnB handle this.
Back from our trip to Valencia, we filed a complaint via the AirBnB support (on July 17th) and did only get an answer today (ten days later, July 27th), telling us that we should have contacted AirBnB within 24 hours - which we didn’t as it was in the middle of the night and we tried to settle it with the Buho House staff on the very next day. AirBnB told us now, that they spoke with Buho House directly and that we are getting the last night (after we returned the keys) refunded. Not completely what we hoped for, but better than nothing.