This was a disappointing experience. We realized as soon as we arrived that we had been deceived by the marketing photos used on Airbnb. The listing uses a photo of a cute patio space as its main photo, and then continues to feature that same patio space in the ‘outside spaces’ photo gallery, but we quickly learned that we had no access to that space during our stay. A sizable transgression given the importance of outdoor space during a pandemic. Moreover, the description of the listing uses vague language that never clarifies the patio is not part of the rental. Once inside the unit, we also discovered that amenities listed, like a dishwasher, were missing and thus also falsely advertised. Extremely disappointing and upsetting to be duped this way for an Airbnb Plus experience.
We reached out to support immediately and thus began a four day long, back-n-forth shuffling as support passed us off from one person to the next promising to help us rectify the situation. This help never actually came and the matter revealed Airbnb support to be dismal, claiming little power to do anything in the situation and thus showing itself more about optics than functionality or purpose.
We worked with Susan to find a compromise: we agreed to stay four nights out of nine booked to balance the economic repercussions for both parties. Susan never fully acknowledged the misleading marketing strategy and refused to pay us back the five nights we did not stay there. She instead only gave us four nights’ worth of refund, citing her inability to find a cleaner on the day of our checkout and thus putting that financial onus on us. It was an absolutely terrible experience and one that has concretized our decision to never use Airbnb again. Shameful.