I decided to give it a week and a half to cool down and reflect on everything before writing this review. Please read the whole thing if you read it at all.
This place was listed as 'Entire condominium' but we were actually sharing her apartment with her. Which isn't inherently a big deal... until it is. There are a lot of little details that come with this. e.g. most of the fridge is reserved, with signs saying 'host' on most shelves. Not a huge detail in itself but that's just one example. There are alot of other signs around the place too. The the doors have hotel-style door locks that can only be locked/unlocked from the inside. The metal thing that hooks on to a latch and doesn't allow the door to open more than an inch or two. There was a tiny sign saying to leave it unlocked. I kind of figured this was for the benefit of other guests (in situations where multiple guests are renting 'shared space' bedrooms etc). But since we rented the 'entire condo', I figured this probably didn't apply to us. However, just to be safe I left them unlocked anyway. (this is important later in the story). Now, there was also a sign on the wall that said 'garage rules'. It's next to the garage clicker thing. Nowhere on this sign did it say anything about reserving in advance and paying an extra fee for the garage. To be fair, I had missed (or forgotten) that on the actual listing description, it does in fact say its 15$ a night to use the garage. It had been months since I had reserved the place and read the full description, and now I am checked in and reading this official-looking laminated sign on the wall, and it doesn't mention payment, just lays out some ground rules and how to use it. SO I had the impression that as long as I follow these rules I could use the garage. Welp, I was wrong. I should have re-read the entire description. She had messaged me at some point one afternoon to say that she had been notified that I was using the garage and to send payment for it. She also wrote a paragraph about the place being non-smoking and laid out where smoking was allowed etc... this had me feeling pretty wrongly accused because no one was smoking in the building, if anything she may have smelled a cigarette butt in the trash from someone who smoked outside and didn't want to litter so they put it out and threw it away. This may cause an odor but not a lingering odor. Anyway, I didn't even see this message until then next day because I wasn't getting AirBnb notifications for some reason. So later that night (before I had seen her message about parking/smoking), we arrived back at the AirBnb, and before heading to bed at around 1am, my friend who was staying with me had apparently locked one of the hotel-style door lock things. Then, at around 4:10am, I am rudely awakened by a continuous frantic beating on the door and a man's voice yelling. I get dressed and open the door and my host is there with some guy (as well as a third person), they are all dressed up like they were out at the clubs, and she is yelling at me and cussing and saying we have a 'big problem' and that I was supposed to leave the door unlocked, and I am just in shock and so so confused. So here I am apologizing profusely - and it's worth pointing out that I was still half asleep and was also clueless as to how the thing got locked in the first place - and she is showing zero empathy and making no effort to try and understand my side of the story, she didn't really even let me get a word in. I'm guessing she was probably not sober. Idk. She was very aggressive and just mean. She finishes by saying she is coming inside to get something and I say okay come on in and she barks no, you go back to bed, I'll be in in a minute. I was just dumbfounded, and at this point, any feelings of responsibility for wrongdoing or guilt is far outweighed with just anger at how it was handled, how I was being treated, at 4am, by my host, at my 'entire condo' AirBnb that I paid for... This isn't how you treat your guests, even if you think they aren't following the rules.
Nathaly, you were so unreasonably rude. Sorry I inconvenienced you while you were out partying but if you don't want to get locked out then maybe change the lock situation so that it isn't possible to get locked out! Ever think of that? You can't trust humans to make zero mistakes, let alone human strangers. You don't even know if they can read English so how are you going to rely on a tiny laminated sign and then get all furious when it doesn't work out for you? This is no way to treat a guest. I was nothing but polite to you and apologized to you and you shoved it in my face and told me to go to bed. Maybe being an AirBnb host just isn't for you. Disagreements are going to happen from time to time and you have to learn how to handle them better. Also, update your garage door sign to mention the rental fee.