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John seemed nice at first. He acted friendly and accommodating, and my wife and I were excited to have a nice host from the other reviews we read. The room was also nice.
Unfortunately, that’s where the hospitality ended. He was very aggressive and manipulative. After our shower the first day, he accused us of causing the water stains on his ceilings and demanded we talk to our travel insurance. We found out that he is two faced. It was like he was preying on one of his guests to fall for his traps. He guilt tripped and accused us of “disrespecting and damaging his property”. Some water had gotten onto the bathroom floor because his shower head kept rotating toward the screen, so water sprayed over it. Naturally we wanted to prevent this as we had our towels and clothes there. So we had to hold the head for the rest of the shower. He refused to believe this and accused us that since the shower took an hour, we must have been doing something unusual. “Be honest, tell me what you were doing in there for an HOUR! What were you guys doing in there? I get that you’re a couple and all but C’MON MATE. Don’t underestimate my intelligence!”
He kept trying to bully us into believing we caused damage to his pipes, floors and ceiling because of his malfunctioning shower. And guilt tripping us for “disrespecting his property” even though we wiped the floor up right after the shower and left the bathroom fan on and windows open. He yelled “It’s COMMON SENSE that wet floors don’t just evaporate in the air. Water doesn’t just still. We can agree it tends to go down right? It will go through the floors and cause long term damage to my house!” I don’t know what universe he lives in, but in this one, water evaporates, especially with ventilation from the fan and the open windows, after being wiped up with a towel.
I cannot tell you how many times this man said this is “common sense” that bathroom floors don’t ever get wet after a shower and that we must’ve used it as a wet room causing ceiling stains and long term damage. In reality, water damage/stains don’t even happen that fast, unless this has been a long standing issue with his property due to lack of maintenance. Which is evident, and AirBnB can confirm this.
Our bathroom floors often get wet but this has never happened to us and we’ve never had an issue, bathroom floors are built to withstand some wetness. That’s why they are usually made of tiles and the grout must be sealed properly, unlike his, which was cracked and coming apart, allowing water to seep through. On top of that, there were pre-existing cracks in the ceiling below too. This has all been documented and confirmed.
But everytime we tried to explain he interrupted, “C’mon mate… This is common sense! I am so disappointed in you guys. You disrespected MY property! This has never happened before! I’ve had many guests over the years and no guests have FLOODED my floor.. How would YOU feel if someone did this to YOUR house?! What are you going to do about it?!”
He tried to bully us into giving him money for it and not offer any solution, simply asking me what I can or plan to do to make it right (a typical line of a con artist faking an injury). Instead of saying what he wanted, he tried to get me to offer as much as he could get out of me. What’s worse is when we actively tried to resolve the issue, he shot us down. We also offered to fix his ceiling, and recommended he reseal the bathroom grout to prevent water leaking in the future. He got infuriated by that, saying, “You’re telling me to keep it a secret?!” (How do you even get that from what I said?). Instead, he kept demanding we call our travel insurance. First of all, travel insurance does NOT cover YOUR HOUSE. Seriously, you’ve done your share of traveling and how could you not know it's medical? Unless you wanted a huge amount of money from our insurance.
Afterward, I turned on the fans saying that if it is wet, it needs to dry. And he said, “fans wouldn’t help dry it because all they do is take moisture out of the air-” Then he realized that sounded ridiculous and then agreed that the fans would work, so he would leave them on and the window open. He told me to go to bed and not worry about it. I went back to my room and an hour later, I went to use the bathroom and discovered he had turned the fans off in the bathroom and the floor below and closed the door to the room with the window. At this point it was clearly a scam. He either knew it preexisted or was trying to create and preserve damage. As a person, this is shady and dishonest John. After we told you we missed our flights and our luggage was lost at that time. (It was later found)
When we were leaving, my wife was having a hard time carrying her suitcase down the narrow stairs. Then John ran up and took it from her, saying to let him carry it so she won’t damage his stairs. It’s reasonable for him to not want to risk the suitcase scuffing the stairs, but it was condescending the way he said it. Implying she will recklessly damage his property.
It was very uncomfortable having a host like that around. He had a clearly superficial and condescending attitude after that hiccup. It showed how little he took himself seriously with the position he chose to be as