This place feels like it would be great for groups of friends who want to be a quick uber or lyft ride to bars and restaurants in Lower Greenville.
For families with kids or older relatives (like us), it might not be the best match. There were lots of small maintenance issues that many guests might not care about (clogged disposal, toilet paper holders broken off the walls, lipstick marks on wine glasses) that contributed to our overall impression of more wear and tear than was evident in the photos. We informed the host about these things privately but received no reply.
And we had one significant problem — our rental car got stuck in the garage on the first day because the garage door was broken when we arrived. To his credit, the host was very helpful and responsive with this urgent issue and got our car out in 3 hours. He also reimbursed us for half the uber ride we had to take to make an appointment while our car was inaccessible.
But the garage door remained broken for the rest of our 5-day stay. We booked this place in part because of its garage, so we could park out of the 100-degree sun so our kids’ carseats wouldn’t burn them.
We expected this to be covered by AirBnb’s amenities guarantee, but AirBnb’s lack of customer support was by far the most negative part of this experience. Compared with years past, it is essentially nonexistent. I was transferred to two call centers, then told to use the message app, then several days went by with the only reply in the app being an out-of-office message, then finally I was sent a link to AirBnb’s help page and told there was nothing further that could be done and the request had been closed.
What is the point of booking through a service like AirBnb vs. directly with the host if there is no company-wide quality guarantee? We do not blame the host for the unforeseen issue during our stay, but we do think it’s AirBnb’s responsibility to make things right, as much as possible, when they go wrong. That is the peace of mind we believed we were paying for. We’ve been longtime users of AirBnb but will switch to other platforms from now on.