We received a message from Conor while in route saying a previous guest “just” broke the lock on the space with little detail on the implications of that. We arrived and were confused because there was no key for us to use and we were somewhat able to lock from the inside. We contacted Conor, in an effort to locate the key so we could secure our things and go get dinner. It was then he replied back via text, quite nonchalantly, saying there’s no key and no way to lock the space from the outside. Basically, we can’t secure our things and someone could easily walk into our space when we’re not there. We felt very uncomfortable about that and unsafe — always worrying our whole vacation here about our things and our safety. We’ve stayed at many Airbnb spaces over many years, and never even had the thought of contacting Airbnb concierge about a problem. This was very concerning to us, and we felt it was necessary to speak to them. The representatives at Airbnb we spoke to, including our case manager, were in agreement that our safety is top priority and there should be a functioning lock on the space we stay at, for our safety. We basically had to spend our first evening of our vacation scrambling to find an alternative place and contacting hosts hoping someone could accommodate us on such short notice in the evening. We were very fortunate to find an alternative place to stay, even though we had to pay more given the circumstances.
We had no desire to rate Conor’s place and in fact, wanted to put it past us and focus on enjoying our trip. After receiving an email that Conor had reviewed us, we then decided to leave a review as well. When we went to leave the review, we noticed a recent review mentioning the lock situation. Apparently the lock was broken for even longer than the in-route vague notification we received. That fact should have been communicated to us well beforehand, with details, so we had the chance to make a decision and other arrangements not during our trip, wasting our entire evening. Our host was not forthcoming with us and did not prioritize our safety.