Worst AirBnB Experience in my 10+ Years of booking via AirBnB. I will absolutely never use AirBnb again.
We attempted to stay with Fir on the weekend of July 7th - 10th of 2022. But unfortunately upon check-in we quickly discovered it wasn’t going to work out for the reasons set forth below:
(1) Safety. The neighborhood is surrounded by homeless encampments. The park across the street had a group of 5-6 vagrants smoking crack. There was an RV parked on the sidewalk outside the building. And there was a pack of homeless people begging for money on the other side of the building. Moreover, if you want to walk to Little Italy, you have to pass through a dark freeway underpass that is PACKED with homeless encampments. The entire area feels extremely dangerous.
(2) Noise. The building in which you’re staying in is directly under the flight path of the nearby airport. Every five minutes you will hear the roar of a 747 Jet Engine flying directly over the building.
(3) Cleanliness. To be honest, for the most part, the unit isn’t too bad in this respect. Someone clearly goes in there and most-likely cleans the sheets and makes the bed, and the bathroom seemed fine. But there is this bizarre long-term neglect that is apparent. For instance, there was a large hole in the ceiling in the stairwell outside our unit. There are a lot of bizarre marks on all the walls, furniture, and ceiling. And one of the fire alarms was dangling from the ceiling. You can tell the unit has a high volume of turnover, but that perhaps the furniture and overall construction of the building isn’t exactly prepared for that level of volume. And it shows. Everything just looks rundown and that they try to cover it up by changing the sheets and wiping things down and such. But, one has to wonder how clean anything actually is. The unit certainly didn’t give me the warm & fuzzies.
Believe me when I tell you that this place feels like an illegal hotel and it completely gave my husband and I the creeps. And there are cameras everywhere. It feels like a dystopian nightmare.
After realizing that the unit wasn’t going to work out, we immediately contacted AirBnB and followed their instructions (which specifically including NOT contacting the host) and we went ahead and booked a nearby hotel and had a much better stay. We felt safe. No noise. No cleanliness issues.
When Fir finally contacted us on Saturday he tried to pretend like he didn’t know we never stayed in the unit, but then in the same conversation, admitted that AirBnb informed him that we never stayed in the unit. And he refused to provide any sort of refund.
And to be honest with you, I don’t think we deserve a refund in full, but I certainly don’t think Fir should be able to keep 100% of our money for a unit we never actually stayed in. We’re honest people. We’re very clearly not trying to pull a fast one and get something for nothing. We just never stayed in the unit. And we didn’t stay in the unit because of the things we discovered upon checking in. Things we couldn’t have possibly known before arriving.
Accordingly, I would not recommend staying with Fir unless you are a homeless person looking for shelter or an airplane pilot who enjoys the noise of airplanes roaring overhead as you sleep.
I won’t ever use AirBnb again as a result of this experience. And, since Fir seems adamant about keeping all of our money and not offering us even a partial refund, I will be reporting this scheme to a number of different various government agencies, including but not limited to the California Coastal Commission and the San Diego City Council, as well as all the major review sites.
Best of luck Fir!