Well where do I start. From the moment we walked into Muemmers ‘Airbnb’ we were met with an unwelcoming attitude from the receptionist (I don’t know if that was Muemmer or someone else). I said ‘Merhaba’ as I walked in, he told me to shut the door behind me. I said ‘Merhaba’ again, he told me to wear my mask. Both times not acknowledging that we are guests and a simple hello would have been nice.
He then asked for our passports…me and my wife have been staying in Istanbul for nearly 2 months now in 2 different Airbnb’s. Both hosts did not ask us for our passport when checking in. We know hotels require passports (if you book with them online) but this was on Airbnb, it didn’t say on the ad that passport+HES code check in is required like any other hotel, we assumed he would treat us like any other host on Airbnb. It was no problem as I had my passport and HES and my wife her copies on her phone, she just needed time to find it and show it…but instead he started shouting at us asking why we don’t have our passports and that it will be a big problem with police. This took us by shock as all he had to do was be calm and explain to us kindly that this is like other hotel bookings not normal Airbnb hosting. Instead he proceeded to shout at my wife, which made me defensive and argue back pleading with him to stop shouting and be respectful. He then started swearing under his breath in Turkish thinking we don’t understand.
He didn’t treat us like a guest, he made us feel like we were criminals. He should have behaved like a host who could have explained things to us in a calm way. He said we can both leave and he would refund us money but then refused to cancel the trip on Airbnb asking us to cancel it. If we had cancelled, we wouldn’t have got our money back because of his no-refund policy.
In the end we had no choice but to stay, it was only for one night and it was really cold and late, my wife sent him her passport photo and HES code, all this arguing and unnecessary reaction for saying we don’t have hard copy
of passport, to only be sent the right details and let us stay the night. He finally gave us the keys, but then minutes later started banging on our door saying we gave him fake passport details. How did we get into Turkey with fake British passport? It was so absurd and the worst experience of my life staying somewhere. He totally ruined our trip, we even got paranoid he would do something if we left our belongings in the room so we took our bags with us when going out.
The room itself was good, it had mould on the walls and in the night it was very cold. Balcony was nice but in all honesty, we just wanted to get out of there. Our trip was ruined.
Please be kind to your guests, you don’t understand how much we were looking forward to our trip, we rushed work and travelled 3 hours for this trip and we was so tired with all our luggage, you truly ruined our trip as we woke up just wanting to check out as fast as we could.
This is an honest review, I apologise for the long details but it’s important people know the treatment we received, we have no idea why he had this attitude with us, as we checked the reviews before we came and they were all positive. If you had checked our reviews as guests, you would know we make an effort with every airbnb we try go to and are very considerate guests. What a shame.