I wish we could have get a chance to stay at Rafael’s place. Instead we ended up standing on the street for 3 hours in -3 celsius degrees with our suitcase, freezing because he was unreachable.
Here’s the full story: I booked a day before our arrival, told him we’re landing at 9:30pm and he told us he will leave the key at the deli across the street which we can pick up until 11pm.
Our plane landed and hour early which made us get there by 10pm. The deli was closed. Obviously things like that happens especially during covid times. I tried calling him, wrote him messages both on Airbnb platform and on WhatsApp. He didn’t respond, despite the fact I have screenshot he was online and read the messages. All in all we didn’t have a place to sleep, it was literally freezing and he was everything but helpful. We ended up staying in a hotel 20 minutes drive from his place and got to bed around 1am which for us was 7am in the morning.. The next day I messaged him again where he responded saying his town was hit by a hurricane. I mean.. ok. I’m also assuming he wasn’t outside but taking shelter somewhere, with internet connection since he was online the whole time. If a host knows he’s supposed to have people check in that evening, the minimum they can do is answer the phone when there’s a problem. Absolutely don’t recommend him, the fact that he was so irresponsible about two people standing on the streets of NY at night, freezing waiting for a simple answer.