We stayed for 5 nights at Chelsea’s place as we were attending 4 full-day conferences in Sydney. Looking at the previous good reviews, we made the booking without hesitation. However, we were in for a nasty shock from the cleaner.
Pros: The house was good for 6 people. Having 3 en-suite bedrooms meant we didn’t have to queue for the bathroom. Water pressure from the shower was good. There are many eateries around which made it very convenient.
Cons:
- Wrong lock code was given which Chelsea addressed to it promptly.
- We arrived at the apartment on the first night and found the floor very sticky. There was a dead fly on one of the pillows, the bedsheets were dusty and fridge and drawers were dirty. There was only one air con remote control to be shared among three bedrooms as the second one has no batteries and the third one was nowhere to be found. Only one hairdryer was available for the six of us. We informed Chelsea about the above and rushed back after a quick dinner to meet the cleaner and her daughter.
- The cleaner was extremely rude. She wore shoes into the house and brought only two sets of bedsheets which she claimed was new but one set obviously had stains on it. Even the cardboard used to hold the bedsheets had stains. She gave us a terrible lecture saying that that was not a hotel and we couldn’t expect an Airbnb accommodation to be clean. She said the previous guests had made the entire house very dirty and she had already cleared 18 bags of garbage in the same house that day. She kept grumbling and scolding us and her daughter had to calm her down. We didn’t even argue back. Was it wrong for us to pay for a clean accommodation to stay in? Would anyone pay to stay in a dirty accommodation? Was it right for guests to get scolded for things that weren’t their fault to begin with? She left without cleaning the floor and so on. All she did was changed two sets of bedsheets. She said we had to request for the third set from the owner. The air con remote control batteries couldn’t be replaced too as she said she couldn’t buy them with her own money.
- After she left, we feedback the above, including a deep hole behind the door (the size of a door knob) to Chelsea. We thought we should at least been informed about these beforehand? There was no reply from Chelsea at all throughout our stay although we checked with her again for updates. Apart from two sets of bedsheets, nothing else was fixed.
- We were finishing breakfast on our last day when the cleaner came and chased us out of the house, saying we’ve past the check-out time (by 5 mins). She kept yelling at us and we shifted our luggage, which was already at the door, into the car. Seconds later, she asked us to get out of the car to clear the table and clean the dishes before we could leave. Is that how the guests should be treated? Being chased out and asked to clean the house before we could leave? That was ridiculous. It was the first time across our Airbnb stays that we were treated this way. We have photos to show that the table and house wasn’t at all messy. We even bought garbage bags and cleared the rubbish every day without fail by ourselves because we didn’t want any cockroaches around.
- According to Airbnb, Chelsea still lodged a claim against us saying that we made the house dirty? That was absolutely a false claim. Please speak to your cleaner about this because this is very serious - both her character and attitude, especially if someone’s making something up. Please be honest at least, after how your cleaner has treated us.
- It’s really a disappointment how we had to endure nasty scoldings and treatment on our first and last day.
- Also, to our dismay, nothing has been done since we feedback on day one after the cleaner left. Chelsea only replied us after we’ve checked out on the last day (after 5 days) that she’s in Vietnam and that Wifi was not good. That was after we’ve feedback the incident to Airbnb.
- No guest should ever have to go through the nasty treatment and attitude that was given to us.