This is my first time ever booking on Airbnb and it was the worst experience ever. I don't think I'm going to ever use their services again nor book this house. The pictures may look pretty, but be aware of this house. From the minute we arrived, everything was not what we expected to have to deal with during our holiday.
We discussed with the host that we will arrive at 4pm. We arrived 20 minutes early and we waiting outside till 4pm. At 4pm, we went to meet our contact person, it appear the house wasn't ready for us. The cleaners were still cleaning, it actually looked like they just started. It clearly wasn't ready for us to use and they did not do a thorough job cleaning once we arrived. They were rushing, which we did not feel comfortable with since we are in the mist of Covid and the place should have gone through a deep clean. Besides the house not fully cleaned, the pool was not cleaned period. It was literally green with algae on the bottom. Leaves, twigs were clogging up the filter and all over the pool. We were shocked that the pool wouldn't be available for us to use. The MAIN reason why we booked this house was for the pool. The owner/host promised the cleaner was going to arrive the next day at 7am. We paid for a house with a pool and we couldn't use it on our first day. The pool cleaners didn't arrive at the time it was promised, they ended up arriving at 10:15/10:30, it took an hour or so to clean and we were advised we shouldn't swim in it till at least 1-2 hours later. So basically we lost another half of day of swim time. What a disappointment! For the amount of money they charged for a night ($1600 with taxes/fees), I expected we should we have been able to swim in there the minute we arrived.
The house also had major things that didn't work. The most major issue was the freezer. During Covid, we were planning on staying in and cooking majority of the time. The freezer was broken and couldn't keep the food frozen! All our frozen food (ice cream, popsicles etc) all melted. We contacted the host and no reply and no solution to get it fixed. The outdoor heat lamps didn't work either. We were so excited for nights outdoor with some heat and it was broken. Again host/contact just said it was broken and no attempt to fix it. Outdoor plugs didn't work either. The master bathroom tub didn't work, no plug to keep the water in. The house looked beautiful, but the quality of the house just wasn't there. Also, the smoke alarm went off at 530AM one of the mornings while we were all asleep! We reached out to the host/contact to alert them and again, no response. No one texted me back. No one cared.
The worst of it all, they had surveillance cameras in the backyard where the pool was and it was never disclosed to us in our reservation or house rules. We understand and will be ok if we were aware of them, but it was never informed that they were there. We had 4 children with us. When we were dealing with the pool cleaning issue the host informed us that she can see the pool is fix and the kids are in it. So basically she was watching and recording our kids in the pool, which is not acceptable. This is a completed violation of our children and our privacy.
I would not recommend this house to anyone due to all the issues with this house. The host/contact person wasn't attentive at all and basically didn't care to help us with any of the issues. Yes, the pool was fixed a day and half later, but there was no urgency to help fix it earlier, considering how much we paid for this house a night.
Also, I'm shocked and disappointed at how Airbnb is helping me handle this issue with the surveillance cameras. We reported to them immediately that this host violated the company's camera policy and we were not informed that they were there. We reported it on 7/2 and no one got back to us till 7/4, saying that we will get refunded for this breach in policy, but yet no one is following up to actually process it. I've been calling and emailing Airbnb to follow up since 7/6 and no one has yet followed up or resolved this issue. It's been over 9 days now and still no resolution. I can't believe this is my first and last experience with Airbnb.