We arrived late in the evening (after 8pm) to an absolutely disgusting mess. The place hadn't been cleaned from the previous guests (we learned was 2 days prior). The food left on tabletops and the overflowing garbage left an awful smell, not to mention nearly every dish dirty in the sinks, tabletop surfaces were sticky, beds/linens used, etc. Not a situation you want to walk in to after a long, full day of driving. It was 9pm by the time we reached the host to try & get it resolved, she offered to cancel our reservation and give us a refund but where were we going to go that late at night? Phone calls to standard hotels came up empty handed since there was 5 adults in our party and finding something for us all would more than double what we had already paid. In the end, Doreen found someone to get over to clean it up but we didn't get to "check in" until after 11:30 pm. Unacceptable in my opinion. She offered to refund the cleaning fee, still waiting to see if that refund will ever be issued to our credit card. That's the least she could do, I personally think we should be refunded that FULL one nights stay. We're a little inexperienced with Airbnb and didn't realize if we had submitted an official complaint with the photos we had taken that Airbnb would have given us a refund.
In any case, we got the impression Doreen doesn't live in CA but in my opinion if you're going to operate an Airbnb then you need to be more involved with confirming the property is ready for the next guests arrival rather than just assuming whoever you've hired has taken care of it. Proactively following up to ensure this type of thing doesn't happen again will be essential. Our family doesn't get to vacation together often with 3 grown children, it's been more than 5 years since we last planned a trip like this. While there's always bumps in any plans and we ended up having a very enjoyable stay in San Diego, this was a HORRIBLE way to get started. This is only our 3rd Airbnb experience and to be honest, I don't know how we'll feel using it in the future. May go back to traditional hotels where you know for sure you won't be walking in to this kind of unpleasant surprise.