There were pluses and minuses for our stay. The pluses were that the unit was generally clean and comfortable and *incredibly* convenient to Palo Alto and Stanford. The hosts were very friendly and seemed to want to be available and helpful.
The minuses, however, really bothered us. I think they boil down to one major problem, poor communication. These were our issues:
1. We asked if we could park our rental car in the driveway, and were told that it was fine, so we did. We were surprised to find out the next day that our car was blocked in by someone else’s car; the host also seemed surprised but said that they would sort it out. They also said that they would pay for us to Uber to our dinner that evening. The car seemed to belong to a renter they have in another unit, so it was sorted out the following day but only just in time for a longer road trip we had planned, so the whole incident caused us a lot of worry.
2. Another renter showed up in our unit (he had the key code) asking to use the bathroom one morning. When you rent an entire unit through AirBnB (which is what they is advertised as) you don’t expect this, and we were *really* annoyed by this.
3. The kitchen, as described by others, is not much, which we expected. But it was also not as clean or well stocked as it should be - lacking enough supplies like silverware and dishes that we’ve seen from other hosts.
I think the host isn’t thinking about this rental the way we expect, or the way most other hosts seem to. They can fix these issues with just a couple of technical improvements, and by being more clear and careful in how the communicate, which I believe they will want to do, and if they do I think this can become a 5-star listing.