Zahida was very kind and offered us early check in, which is why we booked this place. However, when we arrived the condo was not cleaned after the last guest and did not match the pictures, which may not be recent (for example, the fan is completely different). It was dirty, and had damages to the walls. The fan in the living room did not work, a light was out in the kitchen, stains of unknown fluids where along a portion of the bedroom wall, bathtub fixtures were rusted out, the fridge and walls appeared to have been poorly patched up with paint. There was a dead cockroach on the floor. In all of my successful experiences, this place came as a surprise.
The host was friendly and tried to accommodate by having the cleaning crew drop by ASAP, but the ‘damage’ of the first impression was already done… and a lot of what we discovered was not a matter of just cleaning, but basic maintenance and upkeep of the property over time. The property management company lied to us and said someone had just checked out, but the host confirmed they had checked out the morning before. The property management company said we could wait by the pool for 4 hours until it was clean, and offered to try to find another place for us but were “surprised we even got this place since they’re so busy”.
We were so excited for staying here for our honeymoon, and were dismayed by the place not agreeing with pictures and reviews at all, despite all past successes with hosts and as guests. AirBnb requested us send pictures to the host via the app so that AirBnb customer service could intervene with the cancellation and full refund. The host did not like that we had uploaded images (even per customer service’s request) and wanted us to privately text her instead of the app.
We scrambled to find a last minute booking in Maui. It took 7 hours back and forth on the phone with Airbnb to finally find a place, during which we were stuck in our car. The only places left were very expensive or had terrible reviews. We basically lost an entire day of our honeymoon, and Airbnb only compensated some of the cost of our new accommodations.