This was the single worst Airbnb experience I’ve ever had and I’ve been booking stays for years.
Granted, we were the first renters for David so I was willing to accept a certain level of ignorance. But it started bad and continued to get worse. Communication was awful - often taking 8 or 9 hours to get a response. We finally arrived at his property and there was a notice on the door that the city had turned the water off.
I understand this was a new realty purchase and things happen. However after struggling to make contact again, David finally sent us to a secondary property he owned. Knowing we had two dogs he tells us “keep your dogs low profile”. This should have been another red flag for me. I asked him if he was sure it was ok for us to stay there with the dogs. No response.
We arrive at the secondary property and unload all of our luggage and finally sit down to decompress. Within minutes there is a knock on the door and an angry woman is telling us we must vacate the property immediately. She was the head of the condo board and informed us that David did not have authorization to rent out that unit and further more it was a dog-free community and our pets were not welcome. She then gathered a small group of condo residents and they all took up post outside the condo we were in. The group of women made us feel like criminals and stood in a crowd taking our photos on their cell phones as they bullied us out of the room and watched us reload all of our belongings back into our car.
We were then, of course, left with no where to go on Christmas Eve and we spent the next several hours trying to get into a hotel in an extremely busy beach community. Completely humiliating and a terrible way to spend our Christmas.