I booked this property a month before my group of 10 was set to arrive to NYC. 24 hours before we were set to arrive to the airbnb, I received a call from the host Joe. He blamed Airbnb for double booking one story of the two story duplex we rented. We had rented the two floors, but apparently someone else rented one of the stories after us and had already checked in. Within 24 hours before everyone’s arrival, I called Airbnb to see our options and how much they would help. Joe offered two remedies: put a few air mattresses in the one story for the first night and refund a portion of the first night or put half our group up into the hotel downtown. He also offered access to the roof for my friends to hang out on during the trip. We opted to keep our group together and so I asked him to put air mattresses in the unit.
I arrived shortly before the rest of my group to make sure everything was ok. When I arrived, the air mattresses were not made up and the sheets hadn’t been delivered yet. Juancito, a super patient, kind man who helped me check in, showed me the roof, and ran up and down the four flights of stairs to bring the sheets and everything needed to make up the beds.
This review has any stars at all because of Juancito. He made what was a stressful situation less, and here are where things take a turn.
When Juancito took me to the roof, we encountered party trash that had been left. I wanted to affirm those were not from my group so we wouldn’t have a problem. I also messaged Joe to share that the air mattresses weren’t blown up, and that one of the mattresses had what appeared to be blood stains. Image attached for your review and conclusion. After a stressful arrival and set up, I was disturbed by this and didn’t want to have one of my friends sleeping on a mattress with blood. When I messaged Joe on Airbnb, he messaged back “it’s not blood” before calling me and saying blood on a mattress doesn’t matter because it’ll be covered by sheets.
While calling Joe, I showed Juancito the blood on the mattress for which he expressed his mutual disgust and told me he would get a new mattress.
When I informed Joe about this issue, he told me “If I hear another peep from you, I will cancel your reservation. I deal with customers like you all the time.” He continued to tell me he would cancel my reservation as I didn’t have any other Airbnb reviews from past stays.
While I’ve used this Airbnb account prior, I’ve also had other friends help coordinate for past trips on their accounts and we have NEVER had any issues. I was beyond shaken by the gaslighting and reversal of blame he was putting on me for flagging for his awareness the lack of cleanliness and blood-spattered mattress. I was also unnerved as my friends were arriving in town in mere hours and I wanted to make sure we had a roof over our heads for the weekend.
On the second night of our stay, I received word we had been given access to the second floor. When asked for the key pad code to access it, Joe told me via Airbnb Chat to use the stairs from within the unit. Fortunately separately, Jonatan (the other host) gave me the code via text because there was a pad lock still attached making the floors unable to be opened from within the unit. Our original booking had entailed us having both floors as a joint booking, so this experience was a bit disillusioning. Image attached for your reference.
If we wouldn’t have had the double booking fiasco, I wouldn’t have needed to interact with Joe and the dirty air mattress, which meant I likely wouldn’t have had all those issues with him. The space itself was fine (after the bloody air mattress was removed).
I am NEVER staying here again nor with any of his other properties, and will be cautious moving forward for future bookings. All I can say is my trip was a success because of my friends, but next NY trip will be somewhere else.