The host wasn’t too attentive that our check in was after 3PM. We arrived at 4PM. To be fair, he sent us a message around 8AM in the morning to ask when we would arrive. I missed this message, due to notification settings on the app. This is definitely my fault. But I was hoping to get a phone call if he had a sense of urgency, I was not expecting him to let his friend stay in the space we paid for already. He was also not even at the location. I’d presume you’d be at the location you’re renting out around the time of check in... In general he seemed to have a decent attitude though! So I appreciate it.
Responses were not too urgent at first, which can be understandable! However, he then told me because I didn’t respond to his earlier 8 AM message that he was going to let his friend stay the night. This is when it became a BIG problem to us. I was willing to wait for him to come back and only wanted an estimate of when that would be. But he didn’t let us know, out of the blue he told us he let a friend stay instead. If this was the case, I was hoping he’d cancel our reservation in a timely manner. Or call me to get ahold of me ASAP. Why let your friend stay in the room we had already paid for? To be fair, he later offered to let us stay in the room still, but with his friend there (not in the room with us). It would have been an uncomfortable situation for us still. We don’t know him or his friend and it’s not terms we had agreed to beforehand. Luckily we had gotten a full refund. Considering he knew he had a reservation, I was hoping he’d set time aside or have someone greet us maybe. It’s my first time using AirBnB and it was kind of a mixed experience, but I appreciate the AirBnB customer service ! They even paid half of our awesome hotel that night. My only advice is, if you want to get in touch with future visitors - please call them if it’s urgent. Don’t just let a friend stay in the space without properly informing people who paid for the space in advance. It’s asking for trouble and it was kind of suspicious for us. He has a convenient location. I can’t comment on the cleanliness or anything else because we never got in the space. He asked also what the gender of my friend would be - which also didn’t make sense to me. We are paying for the room, I don’t think it matters. We just wanted somewhere safe to retreat after celebrating the New Year, but we probably dodged a bullet. We still had a good time in NY irregardless! He may definitely have good intentions, but this was really crazy for us lol.