TL;DR: We raised safety concerns and issues regarding the host/apartment to Airbnb midway through our stay and had to leave the apartment before the end of our reservation because we no longer felt comfortable staying there and were unable to continue working. Airbnb issued us a refund for the early departure and issues we faced. While the first half of our stay was pleasant, when we refused a request from the host for additional money for an extension they had already approved and processed via the Airbnb portal, they began sending erratic and unprompted messages to our phones and chat and eventually forced us to vacate the apartment early by threatening to shut off the electricity and water. We notified Airbnb when we left and also took videos of the apartment, lockbox, and key transfer because we were nervous after the host’s previous behavior. About four days after we left the host asked us for even more money to replace the keys he claimed we “misplaced.” Overall, the host might be pleasant under ideal circumstances but when we refused to pay additional money above and beyond what had been paid via Airbnb they became erratic, rude, and forced us out of the apartment.
Details: The first half of our trip was uneventful, the host was pleasant and accommodating (our flight was delayed), the location for the property is perfect, there was plenty of space for both of us to work from the apartment. Our first issue was tripping the fuse for the apartment, which left us without power for a couple hours while the host drove into town to reset. The host apologized for forgetting to mention the apartment’s heat source has a tendency to trip the fuse (it was very cold!) and we acknowledged our additional computer monitor could have contributed. A few days later the fuse was tripped again because we did not realize the whole apartment was on a single fuse. The host once again was apologetic but this time it took more than 5 hours to restore the power. From this point on we tried reducing our use of the heater, but we were relying on it to keep warm and to address the severe dampness in the apartment (our clothes hanging in the closet and notebooks sitting on desks were damp to the touch)
Then the host reached out and offered to extend our stay since there was a two-week gap between us and their next tenants, and after a brief back and forth via Airbnb’s chat, we agreed to extend for a short time. The day after they called to tell us they wouldn’t offer the extension because they had gotten a better offer and then reversed course when we explained that was against Airbnb’s policy. We processed the extension via Airbnb (they asked us to process it outside the system to avoid fees) and they began erratically texting us a series of messages that we did not respond to including, “hopefully this makes happy. Fyi we got 280$ for this extension and lost 1300.”, “And will probably get a bad review too. Life sucks doesn’t it when you are stupid!”, “Like us”, “Hope you go long way”, “The way you talked to me you absolutely did not deserve it!”. Later that night they requested even more money than what we had already paid for the original stay + extension. When we refused they sent us a flurry of messages, including telling us they were disgusted with our behavior, that they would be happy when we were gone, and that neither party should write reviews about the other. We did not respond and instead reached out to Airbnb to report the situation, at which point the host notified us that they had “forgotten” they would begin construction on the unit and would have to cut off the electricity and water to the unit sporadically (they knew we were working from the unit and that this would force us to leave, since we had discussed this prior to the stay). Over the next couple days we worked with Airbnb to ensure they were made aware of the situation and we rebooked all of our flights to leave the city quickly since we no longer felt comfortable in the apartment. During this time the internet began dropping completely or decreasing to speeds that made it unusable (less than 8mbps) and we had to use data on our phones to continue working.
We departed shortly after the issues with the internet began and given the host’s behavior we took videos of us leaving the apartment, locking up the apartment and property gate, and locking the keys in the lockbox. We provided all of this to Airbnb and notified them that we were leaving the property and did not want to communicate further with the host. About four days after our departure the host messaged us and claimed we were not locking the gate and had left the lockbox wide open - we told the host they could reach out to Airbnb support (since we had given Airbnb all these details). The host has continued to harass us and is seeking even more money to cover the “lost” keys. Since the host told us that the code to the lockbox was unique to us and our stay this means either the host provided this confidential information to someone else or is fraudulently attempting to claim that we misplaced the keys to attempt to get even more money from us.
We had thought that given all of the other glowing reviews this host received that this would be a wonderful experience. And the hosts responses to all of their negative reviews make it seem like it was the other tenants who were acting poorly, however, after our experiences we cannot in good faith recommend staying at this property - while you might get lucky and have a wonderful stay, you might draw the short straw and have a horrible