This by far has been the worst experience I’ve had with a host on Airbnb. I do not recommend Sam or Josh as hosts, especially since they have so many properties and they aren’t taking care of them properly. Communication in the beginning when I first booked months in advance was great. My party of 3 planned a girls trip for a huge festival in New Orleans 4th of July weekend. The rates were extremely high and we paid almost $3k back in March.
When my flight landed, I asked the hosts to early check in 1.5-2 hours early. They let me know that they had someone cleaning so it might not be possible. No biggie, I didn’t mind waiting. When we arrived, we noticed the house didn’t “smell” or “look” like it was cleaned. There were stains everywhere throughout the house including footprints on bedroom walls. Dust, dirt, grime etc. were caked up in bedrooms, bathrooms, windows, etc. there were also holes in the walls from door handles since there were no door stops.
The truly awful moment came when we found an old bloody tissue in the bedroom within 15 min of being in the home. I immediately contacted the host and their response was “thanks for bringing this to our attention. We’ve documented this. Have a good evening!” This is NOT what you should say to a guest when they send photos of a bloody tissue to you. It wasn’t until I kept sending them photos of the home and expressing our dissatisfaction at the lack of cleanliness that they offered to refund the cleaning fee. That should have been the first thing offered and not “have a good evening!” We were so disgusted that we immediately contacted Airbnb and told them we would not be staying. The sheets and blankets did not smell like they were freshly cleaned. There was no cleaning supplies, detergent, etc in the home at all. Which means if we did need to clean, we would have had to go out and buy all of this ourselves and there would STILL be a cleaning fee charge once we left. This was such a huge inconvenience because the entire city was booked for this festival and we couldn’t find a hotel.
When we finally did find a hotel, we recorded videos of the home while we were there and when we left. From the time we arrived to the time we left, it was 2 hours.
Sam and Josh refused to issue even a partial refund and ceased communicating with us and told us “Good luck” on our hotel search and said that in their house rules, they mention normal wear and tear. A bloody tissue is NOT normal wear and tear. They also refused to acknowledge that they received images of the tissue from us and insisted they only received the images of dirt and dust we took of the home.
Airbnb thankfully agreed that the bloody tissue was a violation and issued us a full refund. They also offered to help us find a new place but we declined since we didn’t want to deal with the possibility of another negligent host.
Fast forward to July 5th, the hosts send us a request for reimbursement for $250 saying “we intentionally clogged the toilet” before we left. Seriously!? We have photos and videos of the toilets before we left. The photo they sent over to us looks like someone just threw a bunch of tissue in the toilet to clog it. In the spirit of full transparency, one person from my party used the secondary bathroom when we first arrived and only “did #1” and NOT “#2”, which would not have caused a clogged toilet. If the hosts are suggesting that using the toilet once with a few pieces of tissue is enough to clog a toilet, that would indicate that the toilet is not in working condition to begin with and guests shouldn’t have been allowed to book the home. We could have easily clogged it and said it was already clogged before we arrived to add on to our case of wanting to leave. Why on earth would we clog their toilet when all we wanted to do was get out of there ASAP because the home wasn’t clean, and the area also was very very sketchy.
We are still waiting to hear back for the final decision from Airbnb about this toilet fiasco and hoping they see that Sam and Josh are trying to find anyway they can to make a few bucks since we cancelled our reservation based on their lack of cleanliness.
Overall, we do no recommend booking with these hosts AT ALL!