We are Canadians living in Mexico, visit Austin regularly. We are seasoned travellers and this is our 19th AirBnb experience. Usually we've had great experiences but when we don't we feel its our obligation to let other people know. This was our second stay at Jenny’s house and unfortunately it didn’t go very well. We like the house; clean, bright and well located. The kitchen isn’t well equipped for people who like to cook. We bought Jenny some wine glasses because there weren’t any.
We arrived late on Wednesday night and were awoken by earth-moving equipment, dump trucks and pile drivers that were preparing the lot behind Jenny's home for the construction of 11 homes. The noise was pretty awful, lasting all day, Thursday and Friday. We contemplated leaving but did not want to waste 1 of our 3 days looking for a new place and then moving. So we informed Jenny of the noise problem on Thursday. We told her we wouldn’t have rented if we had known about the construction. She apologized and said she was unaware that construction had started.
We wondered how she could not know that this huge project was going on in her backyard? It is her responsibility as a house renter to know these things and pleading ignorance isn’t good enough. Mind you, we also noticed that the food in the fridge (eggs, drinks) and in the cupboard (the chips we had accidentally left) were the same as when we had been there in May so I guess she hasn’t checked the place since then. She told us we could leave a day early with no penalty. After a flurry of emails she offered us a 15% discount, which we found very low. And, she said, that was on top of the summer discount she affords everybody! We decided we would prefer not to argue and accept her discount graciously, which we did.
Early Sunday morning, when we were leaving, my husband pulled the chain on the ceiling light and it broke. We let Jenny know and she informed us we would have to pay $75.00 to cover the cost of getting an electrician in to fix the chain. Funny how it worked out to be exactly the same as the discount she had extended to us for the construction noise? We also found that you could buy a new ceiling fan for $30 at home depot, so we found the $75 excessive and inappropriate. We are now in negotiations with AIRBNB to sort this matter out.
So, in a nutshell, this place is nice, clean, and well located but if you have any complaints or accidentally break anything small, you will have a lot of headaches and that, to me, isn’t worth it. Sorry that it had to come to this, Jenny. Hope you let people know in your ad that there is construction and offer them a better than 15% discount. That is the right thing to do.