I put two stars for Zeus.
Our family (3 of us) stayed there 32 days in May-June 2020.
The inside of the house was clean and spacious. We liked it. The property is locating in a nice neighborhood and we could walk after dinner safely. Wi-Fi speed was very fast, and it helped me working remotely.
The backyard and sides of the house hadn't been cleaned well. There were broken bicycle tires, empty beer cans and concrete blocks. We had to clean some of them to let our child play outside safely.
Zeus was not honest about the available amenities. Before we booked, we double checked if the pool was available or not during our stay. Zeus confirmed it's available. So, we went ahead and booked the property. When we checked in, the pool wall was still covered with algae. We requested Zeus to clean it. It hasn't completed until we checked out. I followed up many times. I wasted my time. It was frustrating. Zeus said there was delay due to the COVID-19. I can understand that. But it did contradict with their answer before we book.
Is Zeus a super host? In my opinion, Zeus is not a super host. When we checked in, we immediately noticed that the shampoo is not there even though the listing said it's there. We asked Zeus if they can stock it. Zeus said it's not available due to the COVID-19 situation. Zeus's vender couldn’t supply it. After the long day of traveling, we had to went out to buy shampoo. A super host would have purchased or ordered a shampoo on-line, even it’s cheap one, before a guest check in or at least let guests know that some essential hygiene materials are not available in advance of arrival so that a guest doesn’t need to go out and stay on the line to enter the super market (limited number of people in a store due to COVID-19) and buy one.
We killed total 11 cockroaches. When we killed first 5 roaches at the garage, we reported it to Zeus. And let them know that I suspected the drain from kitchen which directly drained to the outside of the building could be the source of attracting the roaches. All residue of food drained directly to outside (is it OK to do that in the city of Sunnyvale in the first place? It's not good for hygiene and not neighbor friendly. Also, it smelled bad). Zeus replied that if we keep having the roach issues, let them know with some pictures of the suspected source that attracting them. After I killed additional 2 roaches, I sent pictures to Zeus. There were no responses. It didn't surprise me. To be clear, I hadn't spotted any roaches inside of house. Only at garage and at back yard. Additional note:
We also found roaches nest in the back yard.
When I checked in, I found a bunch of (50 to 70) empty beer cans beside the pool. It seemed like those cans had been there more than 3 months. The cans were covered with dirt. I asked Zeus to clean it. I could have done that by myself. But I’m too scared to see roaches coming out from the empty beer can mountain when I remove those. Zeus said they opened the maintenance ticket (very corporative term huh?) and would take care of it. It hadn’t been taken care of until we checked out 30 + days after. I didn’t surprise.
We had shower problem. One of the two showers stopped providing hot water. I reported it to Zeus. Maintenance team came in after 5 days after the report, but they couldn’t fix it. It happens. I understand. The maintenance guys were nice people. There was no follow up from Zeus for what’s the next step though.
We had another shower problem. The draining speed of the other one of the two shower rooms got very slow. We reported it to Zeus a day before our check out. Zeus came back immediately and said they were going to take care of it but there will be delay due to COVID-19 situations. It seemed like Zeus didn’t know when I was going to check out. Zeus is a corporation I guess. I dealt with about 10 different customer representatives.
Zeus blamed almost all the delays and inconveniences mentioned above on COVID-19. I was uncertain if I should believe it. There’s a tremendous amount of people who are being seriously impacted by COVID-19. But in my opinion, one shouldn’t use COVID-19 for all excuses. I felt Zeus took advantage of this situation for their incompetence to provide very basic service to the guest. But my impression could be wrong.
Overall, inside of the property were very nice. It’s lot better than staying in a hotel.