The host canceled our reservation when we were right outside of her apartment for an hour. We were three girls with lots of luggage in a new city and an unfamiliar place in the middle of the day.
We agreed to meet at 3:30 with the maid to pick up the keys to the apartment. However, no one was there when we arrived. We called the maid, who said "You are supposed to come on Monday" (our reservation was for Saturday to Monday). We told her otherwise, upon which she says "I am far away. I cannot come." At this point, we are waiting outside in the middle of the day with all of our luggage with all of our plans on hold. We tell her that we agreed with the host to meet at 3:30, and she tells us that the host is in Thailand and is not available. She starts to raise her voice at us and repeatedly say "this is not my job" again and again. If this is not her job, then whose job is it? She continues to raise her voice and then hangs up the phone, leaving two girls stranded in the middle of New York City. She refused to give us a call back after being unexceptionally rude. It was very hard to communicate with her.
The host calls us a few minutes later to apologize, but at this point, we are already late for all of our prepaid reservations at other places. She was unclear with what to do. She first tells us that her friend will hand over the keys to us and let us in, and she tells us she will call us back. She calls us back, saying to wait 20 minutes. Then, she calls us again to tell us that it was not possible and that she did not know how long it would take. She tells us to go to the random Chinese restaurant right next to the apartment and eat there to wait, but we had reservations at 4:30 at a nice sushi restaurant. She says that she knows the owners. I offer a better plan, to have her "friend" give the keys to the owners of this restaurant because she said so herself that she "knows the owners." She says that this is not possible, even when this is the only possible way for us to get the keys, since there is no other time that we can meet due to our already made plans and reservations for the rest of the day that we ALREADY PAID FOR. How are we supposed to put all of our plans on hold for her irresponsibility and lack of communication? She cancelled our reservation and said that we are "not the right fit to stay at this AirBnB." Thank you for stranding 3 lost girls in the middle of a new city. Again, we had plans for every minute and hour, and we already paid HUNDREDS of dollars for other plans that we made months ago. The host was not willing to accommodate or give us anything other than "one free meal" at the restaurant next to the apartment. This, to us, was not reasonable at all, when the food was worth $10-20 and we paid $100+ for other plans.
We ended up being stranded until 8 pm with our luggage and had to pay an unexceptionally large fee for a hotel. PLEASE get a better maid or PLEASE get a lockbox system for the keys.