BEWARE…VERY BAD EXPERIENCE!!
I will like start off by saying that I have been a long time AirBnB user and have never had a bad experience prior to this encounter.
We took a family trip to California from the northeast to enjoy the weather and bring my nephew of 3 years old to Disneyland in LA. After spending 3 amazing days in Marina del Ray, we drove to San Francisco for 6 hours to stay at this property by the beach -which we had been looking forward to for weeks.
After the long drive we arrived at our property at about 9:00 pm. Upon our arrival we realized that there was someone already on the premise. I decided to call the property manager through the Airbnb app and he was confused about the situation and asked that we wait as someone would be sent over.
Someone arrived 10 minutes later but she seemed startled by an unknown car waiting outside the house . We proceeded to excuse ourselves and ask if we were at the right property as our host might have made a mistake with our reservation. The person told us that she had the property for the next few days so we assumed that the property manager double booked the property by accident. Since we were not from the area we asked for any recommendations on places to stay nearby and the person recommended some nearby hotels. We apologized for the weird situation and started to look into other lodging options near downtown SF.
We then received a call from the property manager saying that the owner of the house was staying at the house and made a mistake with the booking dates. The property manager confirmed that the person we had spoken to was the owner of the house. I thought it was strange that she didn’t try to clarify the mistake when we were outside house.
The property manager apologized for the situation and offered a second property which he said was super plush and we would like better than the house. We drove back to the Moss beach area to check out the property and frankly the place was underwhelming, old looking and most importantly seemed dirty. I called the property manager and told him that we would pass and just stay at a hotel. He said that they would proceed to initiate a refund immediately.
For two days the refund had not been initiated and I reached out to the host via the app to ask about next steps. The person was rude and tried to blame the situation on me for not arriving earlier. I said all I wanted was a refund and she said that I had to cancel the reservation before she could imitate the refund. I canceled as instructed and 4 days later no refund had been initiated so I called Airbnb directly and they confirmed that a refund was not in process. Moreover, the Airbnb rep said that the host had left a review about my visit as if I had stayed at this property. Airbnb checked our conversation via the platform chat and recognized that the host was suppose to send us a a refund due to the circumstances described in the messages.
Luckily Airbnb has started the refund process, but it’s mind boggling that these folks misreiprensted my stay, acted as if I was at fault of the situation and never started the refund process.
I would encourage anyone to find other lodging options to as it is not worth dealing with hosts that show no accountability for their actions or interest in remedying their mistakes.
As for the rest of our stay, we had to book multiple rooms at a hotel and ended spending twice as much due to the last minute nature of our reservation. ThIs was a TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE and I am writing a lengthy message to prevent the same for others.