We want to start by saying we don’t have high expectations for Airbnbs. We just like a problem free place where we can enjoy our vacation and relax. We stayed at Blakes place last year and it wasn’t bad but came with some problems. He assured us those problems won’t happen again so we booked again this year and we deeply regret it.
This was hands down the worst experience we’ve ever had vacationing at an Airbnb. I highly recommend booking another home. There’s hundreds of homes around Fort Lauderdale with amazing pools & yards that are much cleaner and don’t bear so many problems. If anything, we definitely don’t recommend booking this space more than a weekend. Blake is a seemingly helpful host on the outside, but when it comes down to it, he is really disrespectful and demeaning.
For starters, we have been recommended at this point to bag all of our luggage in plastic bags for two weeks to make sure there are no cockroach eggs we will be bringing home from Blake’s place.
Besides for how gorgeous the yard and pool is, everything else was a problem. We booked 11 days which comes to over 5000 and are so sad all our work in the last few months for this vacation was ruined.
The cockroaches are out of control. When we stayed last year, we found a dead one and Blake assured us it’s rare but happens in Florida sometimes and if it’s dead, it’s a good sign (which is true!). This year, we saw over 15 cockroaches by the end of the stay, most were alive. They were seen crawling on the kitchen counter, in the kitchen sink, crawling out of kitchen cabinets, 2-3 in the garage can area, we saw them in our closet, by the couch, ect. He sent pest control twice and it didn’t help. After pest control would come, we would see a few dead ones, and then a day later, more live ones. His place is infested and he talks it down to being normal. My family lives in Florida, I’m here every year. This is not normal and we’re all stunned. On top of the roach problem, his place is infested with termites, in the dresser drawers and master bathroom sink. These problems alone should excuse paying so much for this space, but it doesn’t stop here.
We had to bag our food the whole time and after being too grossed out to cook in the kitchen, we tried using his BBQ grill…which was completely rotted through and couldn’t be used. Bummer.
Just to note: we have photos of all of this. Blake claims to not believe us (not sure how or why) but we’d be happy to email the photos to anyone considering booking this place (jacksonjohn3757@gmail.com). It’s disturbing and I don’t know why there’s so much negligence with his home but we wouldn’t wish this on anyone.
For 9 days we were without proper working AC. His AC was leaking huge puddles all over the main living area that we had to soak up with towels and change out twice a day while running loads of laundry to keep up with it. Twice we had to stay back and be home for the AC guy to come in (which, of course we were fine with, we needed AC and someone had to fix it, but it just added to the long list of problems that made our vacation anything but a vacation as we had to move around our plans, miss out on seeing certain people while here, and constantly deal with the stress of taking care of his home while we stayed there). It was too hot to sleep most nights.
The spa didn’t work for almost our whole stay. He had people come by 3 times to try and fix it. Blake claims otherwise, but again we documented everything after realizing how difficult he was being. We don’t know why he has been lying in his replies to us when we were there and he was out of the state. This one was just upsetting because we also had to rearrange our plans. He mentioned we didn’t have to be home while the pool people were there, but unfortunately the pool people kept contacting us while we were out and it was a huge interruption and really stressful for us as we didn’t know what we were supposed to do. At the end of the day it’s Blake’s pool and home, not ours. One day when they were there for over 4 hours we asked Blake if at this point could he refrain from sending people out until our checkout so we could enjoy peace and privacy, Blake said that we should be okay to go swim in the pool while they are there because they are out of sight. They were not out of sight and we shouldn’t be okay swimming around men we don’t know. It was all just too much and his responses were immature.
This issue is small and didn’t really bother us, but the shower handle and door in the master was broken and busted so it was difficult to use and never fully shut.
All in all, this was a terrible experience and the hostility and disrespect from Blake made us uncomfortable. We asked kindly for a small refund of 4 nights back out of 11 nights, as we’ve been overly helpful and understanding with his home while he wasn’t even in the state but know it’s unacceptable to pay full price at this point as we lost so much valuable time, and he rudely refused any sort of refund or compensation.
Air b n b was mortified to hear about this and tried helping us work this out, but Blake refused to do anything.
I’m not sure why he has so many good reviews. I’m sure his place used to be in shape, but he doesn’t seem willing