My sister lives in western North Carolina. She was visiting a friend in Nashville for the weekend. My parents and I were driving down to meet up with her. Nashville is the halfway point between the two of us.
This house looked to be one that could accommodate us. It was relatively inexpensive, close to the city, and had three bedrooms. My parents haven’t slept in the same bedroom in years and they each wanted their own bedroom.
The first text I received from Kengela stated that I owed her an extra sum of money for taxes that she is charged. She wanted payment via cash, PayPal, or Venmo. I had never heard of anything like this and felt very uncomfortable paying her cash, and not through the Airbnb platform. I voiced my concerns to Airbnb. After a couple of days, they got back to me and told me that under no circumstances should I pay a host any amount money if it was not on the Airbnb platform, and that Kengela would need to list the taxes and collect that money through the platform going forward.
Upon arrival, I found that one of the bedrooms was locked. The bedroom also had a full bathroom in it. When I texted Kengela and told her the bedroom was locked, she responded and told me that I only had three guests and there were six beds available and that I didn’t need access to the other one. I told her that that was not up to her if I needed access to a third bedroom and that I wanted access to the bedroom and bathroom that I paid for when I made the booking. I also told her my experience with her was becoming very unpleasant. She responded and told me that this was an unpleasant experience for her as well. She told me she would come down to the house and either unlock the door or check me out, whichever I preferred.
Upon arrival, her husband was also with her. I could tell he was very agitated and he shook my hand over aggressively in what seemed like an attempt to intimidate me. My dad tried to make small talk with them and ask them where a good place to go see some live music would be. Kengela’s response was “Nowhere, because we want y’all to leave.” When we asked why, her husband told us we were unpleasant, difficult to deal with, and that there were four of us in the house when there were only supposed to be three (my mom made dinner and my sister stopped by before we went downtown for the evening). He also said that he didn’t work for Airbnb and they couldn’t tell him what to do with his home. He explained that he was upset that Airbnb had called him several times over the last couple of days telling him that he couldn’t collect money from anyone in any form other than on the Airbnb platform. When I tried to get them to let us stay, unlock the bedroom, and enjoy our stay in peace, he responded by telling us we had 30 minutes to gather our things and leave before he called the police. We wanted to spend some quality time together and didn’t want to spend the night arguing so we cooperated and left. It was 10 PM on Friday night on Valentine’s Day and almost all hotels downtown were full. We booked a hotel 20 miles south of Nashville for the night.
I called Airbnb in the morning and explained what happened. I haven’t heard back from them and have not yet received any of my money back. Overall, this was the worst experience I have ever had with Airbnb.