In all my years of renting on Airbnb I have never left a bad review, but I feel there are things people should know before they book.
Judith failed to tell her cleaner we were arriving so the house was not ready upon our arrival. This would not ordinarily be a big deal, except that the house is located in an area that rains-a lot- and there was no roof on the deck of this unit, so we had to wait out in the rain; it was not a good start.
We brought ice cream for our son-the freezer is only a few inches tall and completely iced over, so we had to throw it out. Had we known we wouldn’t have brought it. The listing should indicate this. Again, not a big deal if this was the only issue.
The listing indicated there is a bed-to me, this means a mattress. There is no mattress, rather two pieces of soft cheap foam (not nice memory foam for bedding) stuffed into a mattress cover. We found it to be extremely inadequate and uncomfortable, didn’t sleep much for the five days we stayed and woke up in pain every morning.
As I previously mentioned, this unit does not have a roof over the deck, like the others. This property is located on a part of the island where it rains daily -at least during the season we stayed. We were unable to use the outdoor space because of this and had looked forward to sitting outside at night together on the deck after our son went to bed-instead we were cramped in a small space with him, quiet while he slept. We think a roof would greatly improve this property for this reason and all the other units have them.
There was no cut wood for the fire as we had expected from the listing. There were huge logs and an ax, but we didn’t feel like chopping and splitting wood in the rain.
As expected, the place is very small. We prepared food in the cute kitchen-which was well appointed, but didn’t see anywhere on the property to empty the compost or put recycling, so it took up precious real estate in the kitchen.
The composting toilet was fine, and rather interesting, but after the third day of our stay the property began to smell quite bad. We had hoped for this to be emptied or that we had instructions for how to do it ourselves.
Lastly, when we left I left a few dishes in the sink-coffee cup, water glass and a soaking blender I used to make a smoothy when we packed up. Judith was angry with us for leaving the dishes and recycling and compost for the cleaner-for which we paid $100 cleaning fee, and kind of ruined a day of my vacation sending me requests for additional money to pay the housekeeper to do this simple task. I believe we left the place in very good condition and that the cleaning fee should have covered removal of recycling and compost. There were only a few bottles and containers in the bin under the sink-not voluminous. Also she sent us photos of toothpaste that was on the sink basin from regular use, which I felt was harassing; we do not expect our guests to clean the bathrooms when they leave, as we expect the cleaning fee covers this type of cleaning.
The house is very pretty and the photos are accurate. We felt it deserves a mattress for the price we paid.