Ok, so normally I do a deep dive of reviews before I book an Airbnb but I must have forgotten this time because I missed a lot. I have very similar sentiments to some of the other reviews. Yes, I woke up early before check-out to read them because I was pretty frustrated.
I’ll start with the positive first… the location is great! There are many of our fav shops nearby. It’s also convenient to have a grocery and pet store close by. We could walk our fur babies very freely in the area and felt safe. The house itself is super cute & charming. I really do love old craftsman houses. I even find their squeaks cute. Oh, also the heat and a/c worked great!
The negative… check-in! When we arrived at 4pm, I was shocked to find house keeping there still cleaning because check-in was (Self Check-In) after 3pm! She was just as shocked and seemed very confused when I told her we were checking in to the Airbnb. The Airbnb host Judy arrived when I was unloading my bags onto the porch area. Judy was friendly but walked up to me unmasked, which I found a little scary considering the most recent covid surge. I told her I needed to prep for a meeting and just wanted to check-in. Eventually they both left, after saying the house was clean.
Cleanliness… the moment we walked in I could tell it was not fully clean. There was a basket of laundry left in one of the rooms. Not sure if they were dirty or clean. There was bloody trash in the small bathroom garbage. There are webs and smashed bugs on some of the walls. The listing says the rugs were deep cleaned recently, but I do not think that’s true. If you look at the edges of the rugs, there’s a lot of visible hair or something. The pillows on the sofa are crispy, and really need to be washed. I removed them from the sofa so we didn’t have to use them. There is an old smell all throughout the house lol. I used incense to try and help in that area. It just seems like the house needs a DEEP DEEP cleaning before anyone else stays there.
Beds… all four of us felt the beds were uncomfortable. Our bedding had some holes in the sheets. I got a crick in my neck from the very thin pillows, so I went and purchased a new one for myself. The beds are indeed very very loud so as a light sleeper I had it rough. Every move makes a noise.
Kitchen… the stove in the kitchen is very beautiful. However, the clock on the stove buzzes very loudly as it ticks. So we kept the kitchen doors closed as much as possible.
Wifi… since we were in town for work we needed really good wifi. It’s pretty bad. If more than one person was on their laptop, someone would get kicked off the wifi every so often. Even when trying to watch a movie on our laptop before bed was frustrating. So we’d give up and close the laptop.
Alot of the items in the house seem pretty old. Like they were left over from the people that actually lived there some time ago. I think if they replaced/upgraded some things it could be quite nice. Because the house itself is really beautiful. I really wanted to love it.
Also, I do not mean this to be rude at all, but I prefer when hosts are not as communicative. She messaged me a few times and stopped by twice. Once when the gardner was there and another time to ask if the house keeper left their vacuum. We do prefer when we have a bit more privacy to work and relax.
All that being said, we were happy to be in Oakland because Oakland has our heart. The weather was perfection!