Abode has all the ingredients for a great place to stay. Great size, clean, good furnishing, central location. And yet we couldn’t shake the feeling of un-easiness.
First of all, there’s a lot of extra security protocols they make you go through 𝘰𝘧𝘧 the air bnb site which i always find disgruntling.
They make you sign a short term rental agreement, which seems really overkill considering we were only staying two nights and again, it’s on top of everything air bnb already makes you agree to. The most frustrating part is they don’t let you know they need all this until after your payment has gone through on air bnb.
Next they ask for copies of your ID, as well as photos of yourself. Then they also make you write down the names of any possible guests you may have over, and you’re not allowed to have anyone over that isn’t on the list you wrote before your trip. You’re allowed a maximum of 5 guests on the list. We didn’t actually have any guests but it was a bit stressful trying to think if we might want anyone on the off chance.
Oh I had to fill the form in twice with ID etc because their website refreshed when I was reading over the legal contracts and it didn’t save any of the information. Took a good hour and a half to get all of this done.
The company emails you repeatedly about their security and that you won’t be allowed to use anything until after signing etc etc again it wasn’t a problem but it made us feel incredibly uncomfortable.
There’s a general implication of the building having security and that’s why this info is needed so security will let you in. In fact it’s repeatedly messaged that security will absolutely not let anyone who’s not on the list in. Turns out that was not true as the entrance to building didn’t have a lobby or security desk or security. Not exactly how they would have enforced their list thing, and made us wonder if they were monitoring things via camera. Hence the feeling of being “watched” during the trip.
Luckily we were just visiting LA and had no guests etc. But it was a very uncomfortable stay.