This is a five star review. Zero stars for the communication and hospitality and five stars for the life lesson I learned based on my experience with Sam and Emily - a lesson on power of prejudice, perception and negative expectations.
I have no doubt Sam and Emily are fantastic hosts in the right circumstances. Mine were not.
Looking back at my experience, it went south before we even arrived.
I had one bad review on my profile out of many. The review mentioned a cabinet door being broken off and a child. The reservation at Sam and Emily's was for adults only not but I had to make a very last minute change and had to bring one of my children with me. I informed the host. They called me, quoted the review. This is valid, I would do the same since we are staying at their place, I would also want to discuss my concerns. But it didn't end there as they shared their thought with me - a thought of me tricking them into accepting the reservation by telling them it's just for adults when I knew all along I will bring my child. They even asked when I bought my child a train ticket. I paused. I didn't know how to respond to an idea (let alone a serious question) about planning my life around an Airbnb review. No, I didn't trick them. Yes, this was unexpected. We finished the discussion, both agreed to proceed and they charged me an additional fee for my child to stay with me.
Fast forward to the checkout day. I was so relieved to leave as it was so stressful to be in a place where you can't relax and feel unwelcomed. I was cleaning the entire time, moving thinds around and bugging my kid to not touch anything. On top, it's an old house and things seemed fragile. I was so relieved on the check out day, we were not only leaving but also leaving the place in a pristine condition. I proved their prejudice wrong. Not so fast! I was closing a bedroom door to make a last call before taking off, as I was closing the sliding door that leads into the bedroom, it came off the track. No force, no door slamming, simple human action to close a door. I informed the host. They asked if there were any damage to the door, there was none. They told me they would take care of it after we leave. In the evening I received a long message with a passive aggressive narrative that only force and a 'bit of manhandling' could have caused the doors (plural) to be 'torn out it's track'. The narrative also included my child and my inability to keep a promise that my child won't break anything. Plus a damage bill. It didn't even cross their mind there could be a different scenario here. Maybe it was an adult who was closing the door? Maybe the track was getting loose? Maybe previous guests (over 350 of them) gave the door hard time and it was on its last breath when we arrived? Of course not, they already made up their mind before we even arrived and nothing said and done would have changed it. We had an issue with a sink during our stay, it didn't drain well. I informed the host about on day one of arrival. They were surprised to hear about it but didn't make a fuss, charged us or accused us of clogging the sink. I wonder if they would, had we had a negative review that talked about us clogging sinks?