This was honestly the worst Airbnb experience I’ve ever had. To be clear, the place itself was fine… but the way Severin treated me really ruined it for me.
The day before my stay, Severin asked me what time I would be getting there. I told him that it would depend on which train I ended up taking the next day, but I gave him a two-hour window and said I would confirm the exact time in the morning. He proceeded to say that a two-hour window would be unacceptable, and that he was a private person and not a hotel and that he can’t just sit around and wait for people. When I pointed out that I was paying him to accommodate me and that I was only asking for a small amount of flexibility, he sent me a long message saying that Zurich was one of the world’s most expensive cities and that I was getting a bargain, and recommending that I cancel the reservation (he has a no-refund policy, so I wouldn’t have gotten my money back).
I decided to just give him a concrete time, and had to rush to catch a morning train from Milan in order to make it. Severin didn’t respond, though – I sent him several follow-up messages in the morning, and received no response confirming that the check-in time worked for him. Half an hour before my train arrived in Zurich, he still hadn’t said anything… I literally had no idea if I would have a place to stay or not. I had to call him in order to get an answer from him.
The bottom line here is that I spent hours trying to communicate with Severin over something as simple as a check-in time, which added a ton of unnecessary stress to my trip. If you want any sort of flexibility while traveling, please look elsewhere.