Mike's place is in a very nice area of Santa Monica with a short walk to the third street and the pier. It is clean, accessible (parking garage spot included!!) and is beautifully decorated with plenty of natural light during the day to enjoy (especially on the balcony). Having two bedrooms with private bathrooms was also very convenient for us.
Unfortunately, the check-in experience was not smooth. We read the check-in instructions multiple times but could not enter the code provided to unlock the lobby door. Therefore, we had to call an emergency number provided and had to wait until security personnel came and let us in (after asking us a few questions which felt like interrogation. At that point I already regretted not reserving a hotel room/suit).
As soon as we entered the unit for the first time we noticed the thermostat is completely off. I called the same number since it was kind of cold that night and lack of heating for a unit that listed heating as an amenity could become a problem. Mike's response was not satisfactory for me personally, both in this regard and during the check-in, I felt like he still thinks that I am doing something incorrectly and his employee will come the next day and teach me. To top off our bad luck for the night I noticed that the fob that opens the parking garage door did not open the lobby door. I contacted the host on the Airbnb app and the response was still not satisfactory. I consider both lack of heat and not being able to enter the unit as emergency (even if we somehow misunderstood the instructions which we didn't as it later turned out the fob for the lobby door was simply missing), however, the host did not treat these as emergency or it did not feel like that.
Long story short, after sending his employee once the next morning and another time the day after that, the thermostat power was back on but there was no heat mode (Nest thermostat has heat, cool and eco mode, this one only had eco and cool). However, a new fob was provided without additional notification so we got our hands on it on the last night before our check-out the next morning, which made that pretty useless. In the meantime, whenever we didn't bring our car outside, we had to use the garage fob and just enter on foot, reach the elevators on P1 and only then take it up to the unit which also didn't make us feel like paying customers and more like a burden or someone who is sneaking into this unit. I understand that things can go wrong. Sometimes multiple of them at the same time like during our stay. However, the host's reaction and communication can make all the difference in such cases between feeling stressed, dismissed and disappointed or feeling understood and taken care of.
There were smaller things to note such as the soaps provided made our skin very dry or the door of one of the bedrooms did not close properly (we had to try many times to finally have it stay closed).