Let’s begin on a good note: the bathroom was very clean.
Now for the rest.
It all started with the check-in. We looked at the check-in provided on his listing, which said there was a lock in front of the listing which we could open and would give us the key to the apartment. When we arrived at the apartment, the lock didn’t work with the code he provided in the listing. After calling the numbers he provided in case something went wrong, we found out he had messaged me personally a separate set of instructions for how to check in. I live outside America and because of that I don’t receive messages easily unless I have Wi-Fi. He was very rude to my girlfriend on the phone. After I turned on my data to see what he had sent, I realized that what he had done was hide a key behind a pillar in front of the building. The picture he sent of where the key was exactly located was very close up and it was very difficult to tel exactly where it was. Then there were more problems because in his directions he had sent us there was a spelling error on his part (he meant “mat” but sent “map”). This made us more confused and he was again very rude to my girlfriend as we tried to work our way through his mistake.
Once we got into the building and up to our room, we saw the door. It looked like it had been kicked in a time or two before, and even when it was locked, the door could still be pushed in about an inch away from the door frame.
We made it in, and the room was extremely hot. The boiler was sending unneeded heat into the room. In the corner of the main room there was an AC unit in the window, but it was not effective and would have taken hours to regulate the temperature of the room, and none of the windows in the room would stay open. We both had long and busy weeks ahead of us, and so the thought of staying there for the night was very unappealing to us.
We had problems connecting to the WiFi, but again, much like his earlier messages, it was because he made a mistake when typing the password. It should have been all lowercase and he left the first letter as a capital. On its own it’s a small mistake, but in the larger context it showed a host who was not attentive to details, and who would get frustrated without realizing it was their mistake that was the problem.
The carpet in the main room felt very scuzzy. Neither my girlfriend or I felt comfortable taking our shoes off in the room.
My girlfriend went to the kitchen to try to open a window and the window actually fell in on her. She was fine afterwards, but it was because the glass window was not attached to the frame of the window itself.
After some deliberation, we decided to leave the listing. The main concern for us was always the temperature in the room, but because of the door and window, we wanted to make a complaint to Airbnb’s Help Center for safety concerns.
When the host found out about this, he harassed both me and my girlfriend, using profane language and saying we were lying about our experience at his listing. He even called my girlfriend, no doubt to continue this behavior.
At this point, Airbnb has determined that no safety terms on their end were violated. But again, just to recap. This host:
- Had conflicting check-in information that what was on his listing, including just hiding the key behind a pillar where someone could come up and take it, and then was rude to us when we were confused about the situation.
- Harassed both me and my girlfriend after we made complaints to Airbnb’s safety team.
I’m sure without a doubt that he will make a negative rebuttal to this review, saying that we were lying or that we’re garbage, or something similar. He’s done that for at least one other review he’s been given to date. I wouldn’t be surprised if he also left me a very negative review. But the difference is his would be my only negative one, and I can say for certain that he has had at least one other negative review citing rudeness and uncleanliness among other things.
In summary: if you’re looking to stay here for some time, take my advice (which I wish someone would have given me before I booked this room): spend the money and get a place that’s cleaner and safer and with a host who‘s not going to be rude to you or harass you.