Its a long review. So brace yourself for some story telling. It was a traumatic experience and I am still battling to overcome the mental health impact it made on my life.
I thought I was not going to do this review because it caused me serious mental health issues. Gerald will probably respond & defend himself but it’s up to you if you wish to try your luck & hope that he’ll be in a better mood when you come and stay there. However, if you are looking for a host who can’t resolve conflict with grace, shouts at you when you make mistakes & highly confrontational or stand offish, then this is your listing. I read great reviews about him & people said he was nice but I was sadly disappointed by how he resolved conflict and shouted at me two days in a row. I have no ill feelings towards him & i don’t want him to lose business because of me . However, what he did was wrong & unacceptable behavior for a host. It is only my prayer that no woman or anybody for that matter ever have to go through the experience I did & that’s why I am detailing this.
Maybe it was just a bad time for him to have a guest. Maybe it was just me. I really don’t know why this happened to me to this degree but the energy in that house was terrible. I’m still trying to make sense of it. All I know is that there is a way of addressing people even if they made an error & he didn’t do that.
Best of luck to you & thanks for your time in reading this.
Review
House feedback:
The house is indeed clean and the location is perfect. Easy access and secure. Air conditioning, good. WiFi good and quiet place. He helps with luggage upstairs and check in is easy. Thank you for that Gerald BTW. As for the rules ( ask him to remove personal information) before booking so you’ll know if you are a fit.
Size of apartment : small room as advertised. Common spaces are right. No privacy he sleeps in the lounge & the bedroom is not exactly yours for the period because his clothes are in the built in cupboard. Not ideal for somebody with alot of luggage.
You use the brown one as per the guidelines but only the small left hand side compartment otherwise you will live to regret it your decision to book the listing if you make one mistake.
I made the mistake of skimming the rules when it comes to page two on the towels & used the wrong ones. I tried to fix it and offered to lander then and he refused.
The rules say a brown closet unit or so is available to guests etc but be aware it’s only the left part for hanging clothes not the drawers. He had left items in the drawers like sheets. I removed them & placed them in his personal drawer as I understood the closet was allocated to me on the rules & the bedroom was not a common space. I then informed him afterwards & his energy shifts. he responded via the app at first to not move his stuff without asking him to read & follow the rules. The question I raised was , but you gave me this closet to use. I strongly felt he should have moved the items before I came over. I used my own discretion to place the sheets in his closet becaus i genuinely thought he left them by mistake.
I communicated in writing by taking responsibility for the error but he confronted me in person after this for saying the closet is not big enough.
This all happened on day 1. so looking for an alternative place would have been a financially taxing exercise and inconvenience. I explained that the small space in the closet is not sufficient & that’s why I moved the items. He said perhaps u need a bigger space & went on to a long argument with me. He told me the following :
I had no respect for his stuff.
Crucified me with a full on confrontation for 20 mins if not more, yet I’d communicated the error on the app & apologized for both the towel mishap and the closet. When I defended myself for the closet lack of clear direction from his part, He insulted me, belittling my explanation as an excuse. He was highly dismissive of another view on the matter . What killed me is how he Shouted at me like & spoke to me with so much disrespect.
The dialogue time and energy was very hostile & irreconcilable!! However I walked away after a long spat stating that we can agree to disagree on the matter but his points were noted.
I was annoys and on eggshells after this. The conflict caused me a great deal of emotional distress & sever trauma as my own parents don’t shout at me like he did. I was terrified of him & thought everything I was doing would rub him the wrong way.
During our spat, He insulted me and said that “clearly common sense is not so common to you” & that I’m different to other guests when I asked him to make sure he is clear on what one should do if they come across a dilemma that is not listed on the guidelines & uses their own discretion because he has a specific expectation. What is important to note here is that during this time I was still responding to him calmly & stating that I have no end goal to biker with a host or defy his rules. Maybe when guests walk in he must reiterate the specifics as or something because having a confrontation is not ideal. None the less I made sure to give