BUYER BEWARE!!! If you experience any sort of changes to your trip do NOT expect any sort of assistance or understanding from them during these hard times. They are all rules all business as it appeals to them, lacking in empathy or concern.
Traveling during this time is complicated at best and scary at worst. We are all trying to navigate this new norm and thanks to the airlines leniency policies on rebooking I know many who have had successful trips in the last few months. Our family has 2 Airbnb’s in New Mexico and we have been very understanding with cancelations and rebooking to help accommodate the unexpected times that we are living through.
This being said, we did not have intentions to cancel, or even rebook this reservation, however, as the US, and particularly California was not getting better and with the intent of traveling with 2 women in their 70’s we requested to rebook a few weeks in the future a couple of weeks before our intended travel. We were met with a firm NO essentially, we were informed we would not be allowed to move our reservation and if we were not coming, we would need to cancel and would not receive a refund unless it was rebooked, which seemed highly unlikely.
With this information, we decided to move forward with the trip to avoid losing our investment. We informed William we would go ahead with the trip since we were unable to reschedule or cancel without penalty. His response was “fantastic!” I very specifically asked what needed to happen in order to reinstate this reservation and he said, “Nothing, he’d take care of it on his end.” We trusted him and booked our flights.
We arrived in San Diego and attempted to contact the host William to get the access codes to the Air BNB, he responded 2.5 hours prior to check in, saying we needed to rebook the reservation at the full price a second time before we would be provided access, with NO mention of a refund. We paid for the reservation in full on July 27th. I reached out to Airbnb who opened a case to try and reinstate the reservation, however, with everything being time sensitive, we tried to expedite the support. We were on the beach, trying to enjoy our trip, however, had no information to access a reservation for which we already paid. We were on the phone with Airbnb support on 4 different occasions, robbing our vacation of over 8 hours of our stay and peace of mind.
Airbnb suggested that William lower the reservation to the minimum of $10 a night to assure us that we would not be paying an additional $1K+ for our reservation, which we requested from him, however, he refused. I finally got written assurance from Airbnb, not William, not that I had trust in him at this time, that if I paid for yet another reservation they would assure that I got a refund. William never communicated this to me, nor did he seem concerned with the fact that we had traveled to San Diego, in obvious uncertain times, with a reservation he assured we had, yet clearly did not.
We rebooked the reservation when we felt confident in Airbnb, and received written word that we would receive a refund. This was completed nearly at 9pm on our end. We then proceeded to wait for the gate codes for an additional nearly 2 hours. We had our luggage with us, we were frantically looking for another option, and finally got the codes at 10:47 pm, nearly 8 hours after our 3pm expected check-in.
While we had a nice stay, and this location is great (although not as close to the beach as advertised), we enjoyed the space, and the outdoor table, grill and fireplace. The stay would have been far better had William and Kelly actually had an ounce of empathy and worked with Airbnb to reinstate our reservation. Had we known prior to booking our flights this would be an issue, as I very intentionally asked if there was anything I needed to do, I would have reached out to Airbnb to get this sorted. William and Kelly did not have a care in the world that two young women were trapped in San Diego with possibly nowhere to stay. I’ve never received more condescending words in both messaging as well as the directions and rules at the house. They never owned up to fact that they dropped the ball on reinstating the reservation.
BUYER BEWARE!!! If you experience any sort of hiccup in your trip, violate any of their expectations, you will not be met with any sort of assistance or understanding from them.
To add insult to injury, on checkout, we were cleaning up and making sure everything was in good shape before we left when their house keeping showed up at 11am on the dot. We informed her that the towels were in the tub and there was a load of dishes running. To which the housekeeper said, “you mean you did everything that was expected of you?” We tried to quickly get out of there as it was clear she was not friendly. We have Airbnb’s in NM and quietly said to one another, our house keepers are not allowed to treat guests as such. When we were already outside trying to get our Uber, she came out and yelled at us, “you have been nothing but rude to the host, now GET OFF THE PROPERTY!”
I honestly have NEVER had a more stressful, unpleasant Airbnb experience in my life, and I travel a lot. It sadly took away from our stay and I would encourage anyone to be VERY cautious moving forward with any booking with this team, especially during this time. (NOTE: they have several properties in the area).