This was the worst Airbnb experience I've ever had. My sister and I were in town for a quick trip and knew this spot wouldn't be anything luxurious when booking, but figured it'd be alright for such a short stay...bad call.
The day we checked in, we kept finding little black bugs everywhere: crawling out from under the beds, in the bathroom, all over the silverware and glasses in the cupboard. We then found a massive clump of black hair on the shower floor (sis and I are both blonde). We were grossed out but kept killing the bugs, hoping we'd gotten them all. We had tickets to a show that night so didn't have time to think about making different accommodations, and decided we'd reassess the next day.
After an unrestful night on a severely sagging mattress that caused an incredibly stiff neck, we continued to find bugs and we're ready to find new lodging. I messaged the host about the issues and told him we were going to try to switch to a hotel and requested a refund. Meanwhile, my sister was attempting to book a room with Marriott but after more than an hour on the phone with their customer service trying to get her recently acquired reward points to post to her account on an expedited timeline, we had to give up as we had other commitments that evening. We also didn't receive any reply from the host, so were concerned we may end up paying for two sets of accommodations. In other words, we reluctantly stayed put in the bug-infested Airbnb for one last night.
Around 10:10am the following morning, we were abruptly woken up by an aggressive banging on the door. It was a colleague of the Airbnb host, yelling that we needed to get out. We replied that we would be needing a late check out, at which point he demanded we immediately pay him $25 on the spot. We said we would pay upon checkout or through Airbnb, but he kept screaming that we needed to pay him NOW (presumably with cash?). It was such an incredibly uncomfortable situation and we didn't even have cash, so we asked him to leave and again said we could pay with a credit card at check out or through Airbnb. He seemed to go away so I took a quick shower and as soon as I was out, he was back banging on our door and using his key to unlock it (keep in mind this was around 10:30am, far before the late checkout time of 12pm). I was only in a towel and quickly said I wasn't dressed / asked him to please not come in, but he ignored me and barged into the room anyway (against our explicit dissents). He continued demanding immediate payment for late checkout and then had a security guard join him, who also came into the room uninvited while I was in nothing but a towel. He grabbed my sister's suitcase and dragged it into the hallway, at one point calling her "retarded." I eventually managed to somewhat mediate the situation enough to get the host's colleague / security guard to leave long enough for me to put clothes on / get my stuff together so we could leave.
During this fiasco, the host finally messaged me back and asked for photos of the bugs. We hadn't taken a photo of every single one, but I sent him seven examples, along with a photo of the hair clump in the shower. He then proceeded to accuse me of lying and and said I was "over exaggerating" the issues...no semblance of an apology or empathy to be found. Appalling.
If this is the only available spot in New York...wait to come until it isn't.