My experience working with Victorien was, without a doubt, the worst I've experienced in my life. No other host or renter or landlord has ever caused me so much undue stress and property loss as he. When I first arrived at one of his properties on December 19, he was not there to meet me but his son was. This would have been fine except that both he and his son both told me that the other would be giving me the door code and Wi-fi password. I had to come back to the son repeatedly before Victorien finally called me to give me the door code that I needed to walk my dog. The last thing that I asked during the first two days was whether I could move the TV from my room (the one with the broken leg), from its precarious position above my fridge to the common area where it'd probably get more use. I was told this was fine, and I moved the TV out of my room. The TV was very light, and I was able to located the lost and broken leg behind the fridge and reaffix it to the right side of the TV so that it would stand well on the table in the common area.
For a few days, we had no reason to communicate, and Victorien's son was affable and responsive enough. Not great, but not terrible either. All of this ended on December 30th, when a pipe exploded in my basement bedroom, spraying all of it with the second and first floors' waste water. The water got over all of my things, including all of my clothes and my electronics. The water also smelled like vomit, which contributed to my feeling sick for about three days thereafter. Because there was no other option, I went through my things and pulled what I could into the common area after cleaning it as best I could. Many clothes went into the trash. The electronics were stored according to their moistness. My keyboard, sadly, took the brunt of the damage.
Victorien's son leapt into action when I called for help. He called his father, told him about the situation, and advocated for me when Victorien started to minimize it and wonder whether anything needed to be done at all. Victorien's son also facilitate Victorien opening up another room for me at another of his properties. He helped me move my cleaned or bagged belongings into his car, and he drove me to the new property himself. I wish that I could give Victorien's son a different rating, but since this account is Victorien's, and they are separate people, I will treat them as separate here.
When I arrived at the new place, Victorien showed me around and placed me in a room. With his son's help, I brought my stuff in, and I was able to get settled into my new place. I asked Victorien whether he had a washer/dryer I could use. His washer/dryer is usually reserved for family, but because of the disaster caused by his inability to properly maintain his properties, he was willing to let me use his washer/dryer this one time. It took me asking several more times to get the family to remove their own clothes from the washer/dryer so that I could use them. Finally, when they did move their clothes, Victorien explained to me that it was too late to wash clothes now. I explained to him that I was late washing my clothes because nobody would move their own clothes from the washer/dryer, and I explained to him that some of my clothes were soaked in his waste water which would cause the clothes to be further damaged if left to sit in that water for hours. He relented and recognized that I needed to at least run the washer once that night.
In the speed of the move and the disaster and stress of it all, I left my dog's urn--the one that my niece lovingly made for him--the one holding his ashes--behind. That sucked. I thought it was with my things, but it was not. I told Victorien about it, and he said he'd ask his son.
The following day, I began to exist in that space in earnest, and I discovered two major issues with the room. (1) The room's wiring was set up so that if, say, a computer tower and a refrigerator were plugged in at the same time to outlets across the room from one another, this would set off the breaker. This is a major problem for me, since the reason that I am using AirBnB at all is to be able to work as a software engineer remotely in peace. (2) The internet was choppy. I was provided Wi-fi, supposedly. But the Wi-fi was to be drawn from a wireless router that lived in the second floor of the house. I was in the basement, remember, and there are NO Wi-fi extenders in the home. So I tell Victorien about the extenders, and I ask him that, as an IT person, if I were to suggest a solution and buy a product to make it happen, whether he would be willing to implement the solution. He said yes, so I proposed buying an extender that would connect the data stream to the home's electrical grid, using the very sources of interference against them to get my internet to the basement securely and stabily. He agreed with the solution, and I told him I'd buy the extender the next day.
The next day, I bought the extender and brought it to show him. As he gazed at it, he explained to me how he wasn't sure I wasn't trying to hack him and so did not feel comfortable using the extender on his router. I gave him the booklet for the extender, explaining to him that he was free to read through its functionality and