Unfortunately, my group did not have a good stay at Reginald's place over the Thanksgiving break. The following sequence of events took place. Some were good, some were bad.
1. Our flights changed and we reached out to Reginald to see if we could do an early check in. He told us that as long as nobody was there the night before, the place would be clean and we would be able to check in when we needed. This was super helpful and appreciated.
2. Our group tried to go to a restaurant located half a mile from our BnB and were planning to walk to the Bnb after we got food. Our driver told us he would literally take is anywhere else because the place was not safe and he did not want us to get out of the vehicle. We ended up going to our BnB and then went to eat in a safer neighborhood and get groceries.
3. We took a tour of the place and it was spacious and looked mostly the same as the photos. There was not enough comfortable for the seating (a love seat and two chairs) in the living room. We had a group of eight of us. In addition, the pool table/Air hockey table upstairs was literally busting at the seams and we were afraid to use it because it was falling apart.
4. Later at night, we went to cook our dinner. When going through the material to cook with, we noticed that there were no oven mitts and the cooking equipment was not great. There were two large pans but one was missing a handle. This made cooking and eating as a group difficult.
5. Our group went downtown on the first night after dinner and when we got back, we went to clean dishes and load them in the dishwasher and noticed three roaches in the bottom of it crawling around.
6. The next day I contacted Reginald about the roaches and he let us know that this has been an issue on and off, but that he would call the exterminator again and that he had recently called them as well. While this was disconcerting because it was a known issue and the place was rented anyway, I was pleased with the promptness in which he responded to us.
7. The next day were hanging out before going to the stadium for the game, and realized that there were only 4 seats (not counting kitchen chairs and bar stools). This made hanging out and watching the TV uncomfortable for half of our group.
8. Friday, we went out to breakfast and when we got back to the house, all of the smoke detectors were all going off. We contacted the host and he got back to us within 5 minutes. We realize this was a freak incident; the advice given was not helpful and was unsafe. We suggested calling the fire department once we ruled out the alarm system, but our host suggested simply removing the batteries in all of the smoke detectors. Not only was this an unsafe suggestion, but it was an illegal one. The Firemen who arrived were very helpful and ran tests to ensure that there were no fires or carbon monoxide leaks anywhere but could not figure out how to get all of the alarms off. They were able to disconnect some that were the loudest, but two or three alarms that were much quieter remained going off even after they left. This process took almost two hours. Before the firemen left, they asked if this was our first night, and then advised us to not walk around at night because the neighborhood was unsafe.
9. While on the phone with our host, he suggested that he would refund our last day if we wanted to find another place to stay. This suggestion was unhelpful as we had a group of eight and it was Thanksgiving weekend. When we looked for places to stay to take him up on the offer, reasonably prices places that would accommodate a group of our size were not available and hotels were several hundred dollars more expensive than the one night he was willing to refund.
10. Several hours after the start of the smoke detector incident, an electrician arrived and worked on the detectors for a couple of hours. We were happy that he was able to get someone there the same day, but this was frustrating because while working on the alarms, this caused them to go off very loudly again on and off.
11. The rest of the trip went smoothly other than the cleaning up of the apartment. We were unable to find any extra garbage bags to help clean up prior to leaving.
The general consensus of our group was that due to these events, we would not stay here again.