I would have loved to give this place a 5 star however based on our experience the 3 stars would have to be given from us.
The place is very nice and cozy. It is cleaned and well equipped. The only thing I did not like about the place itself was the fact that there is no lock for the entrance to the unit we were staying in. There is a back entrance from the parking patch that has the lock, and once you are inside it splits to a stair which leads to upstairs where the host lives and the door to enter the listed unit. This door to the unit has no lock so we didn’t really feel very easy and feel as if we could easily be spied on by the host throughout our stay which to be found out later that Bob has set up cameras that views his guests as they come and go. We felt a bit uncomfortable and felt that there was a lack of privacy coz every time we enter or leave, Bob is most likely watching.
So as mentioned I liked the place but the reason for the 3-star is because of Bob. We had such a horrible experience dealing with him. I initially booked the place for 4 people (my friend, her husband, my husband, and myself) to come spend 4th July weekend up in Asheville. We arrived on Sunday 07/04/21 and my brother and his friend travelled up from Atlanta to meet us there. So we went and spent our day along Blue Ridge Parkway and stopped by at some breweries and enjoyed the firework. Long story short, we were all tired and had been drinking when we got back to the place around 10 pm., so I did not want my brother and his friend to have to drive another 4 hours back to Atlanta, fearing that they might have an accident or so. I didn’t think it would be a problem for them to just sleep on the couch for the night and leave in the morning. Well at 10.20 pm. Bob sent me a message telling us that he was watching the camera and saw that we had 6 people enter the apartment and it was a problem. So I responded back apologizing right away and told him the it was a last minute thing and I am more than happy to pay for any extra charges, and for him to just tell me. It should have been resolved quite easily but he made a big deal out of it and told me to go to his front porch to have a conversation about the issue. So 3 of us went up to meet him and again I apologized for the inconvenience right away and tried to explain the situation and of my concern for my brother to travel back after a long day but he kept cutting me off and saying he doesn’t care about the situation. I told him I’m more than happy to pay and he kept saying “no”, “it’s against the rule” and all. So my husband said that he and my brother would just go sleep in the car and should be fine. But Bob kept saying that “well you are using the facility anyways” and “no you cannot sleep in the car”, and “it’s the rule, only 4 people can stay there”. The conversation was really going no where, so we asked him what he proposed we do. So his response was “unless we come up with $200 cash right here right now I would have to cancel your reservation”. We were really confused because we’ve been telling him from the beginning that we were willing to pay anyways, so if he had just told us then, none of us would have this bad feeling. And for him to threaten to cancel the reservation right away at 10pm. unless we give him cash right away, we were upset because he’s not offering any refund so basically we won’t be able to stay anymore (even just the initial 4 people of the party), we would lose the money we paid, and we have to go find somewhere and pay extra. This was more like a ransom situation as he knew he had the upper hand. Anyways as we were willing to pay already so my husband went to go get the cash for him while my friend and I stayed behind. Now that he knows he’s getting the money his reaction kinda changed and he started trying to have a conversation with us, asking how our day went, if we had fun, if we enjoyed the fireworks and all. To us this made us feel his insincerity and that he is like a hypocrite. Once my husband handed him the money, he said he’ll bring down more towels and stuff but we told him we didn’t need anything.
We were all very upset with his behavior and felt he was extremely unprofessional. We could have easily got the same result in him getting the extra money without all this drama entanglement. Down the line, the place was nice, and we tried to forget the whole incident and I was going to rate the place fairly with the 4-star (coz no matter how nice the place is, the whole visit and experience was tainted by this incident). The next morning my brother & his friend left and the 4 remaining stayed another night as we initially booked the place for.
HOWEVER!!! Once we left on Tuesday morning and checked out, Bob who was watching the camera as usual, sent me a message which felt again like a threat saying that based on the events of Sunday night, we should not exchange reviews for each other. And if I decide to write a review for him then he will notify airbnb saying that I violated the rules and it will jeopardize my membership