Hi Alex, below is my honest feedback on our stay. We have stayed in many Airbnb's across the world and I have never experienced such poor service as we did from Dickinson Villas. We have just checked into our second villa we are staying at and the experience is like day and night. They called me by phone 2 days ago, met us at the villa, talked us through everything and then left us their cellular number to contact in case of an issue.
The fact that we lost out on staying in the villa on our first nigh, had to then pay extra to stay in a hotel was simply because your communication and check in process is not up to standard. You say I only uploaded my passport information at 16h30 on the day of check in and this is not correct. In any event I had emailed Lenka the day before on the 26th June to say that I believed I had completed the check in process correctly and asked for checking in procedures but I also asked if all was in order and to let me know if you needed anything further. I heard nothing from the 26th June until the morning of the 28th June.. At that time she could have easily then advised that there were documents outstanding and I would have rectified it immediately. She had the whole of Sunday and Monday to get back to me. I also tried repeatedly to call your emergency number but there was no reply. We only left Muro at 20h00 that night so we could have easily stayed there the night of the 27th June. You really should compensate us for the night that was lost.
Lenka is new to her job and whilst she (and also yourself) seem to be very nice people and are always very polite in correspondences, the bottom line is that the service we received from your business was poor and not good enough for following reasons;
You should meet your clients at the house they are renting. Lenka says you have a 'no meet or greet' policy. If this is the case you should advertise this. When problems occur, your guests feel that they are on their own and have to sort it out themselves.
Dickinson Villas is essentially an 'absent' host. Its very difficult to get hold of you to talk to you and whilst you do always answer your emails, its a few hours later and the issues we experienced being unable to 'check-in' and no electricity and water etc require real time responses.
The electrician David, who came to the house every day that we were there and basically helped save our holiday for us - advises me that only a week ago a brand new system of solar etc was installed and that these were simply teething problems. The fact is that to rent a place and pay these fees and not have simple things like water and electricity, no matter how nice and clean a villa it just does not help when the basics are missing.
So in summary, I would say that the house location was great, the house was very clean, the pool and garden are well maintained, the house is well equipped BUT as a host you need to please be more available to your guests in times of a problems. We were there for 6 days and each and every single day we had a problem which is very stressful when on holiday.
Cheers Andrew.