Where do I even begin on this review? At the time of booking, everything seemed okay. I got an immediate confirmation of our booking which I always assume is done automatically. A few days prior to the arrival, I received a long message detailing check-in, house rules (with housekeeping requests), and towel accommodations. Up until our arrival, the host was responsive. We arrived about 20 minutes before check-in, so I messaged to ask if it would be okay to enter; he replied affirmatively within a few minutes.
Upon entering the house, it was clean, minimalist, and cold. After some quick exploration, we found all the bedrooms and bathrooms, reasonably appointed with linens and towels, but nothing more than that. The kitchen was bare except for the Keurig and some pods. No dishes or utensils, which was slightly amusing given a request in the pre-check-in message to clean all used dishes (which was probably automated). This pre-check-in message also asked us to remove garbage but not overfill it - which was also frustrating because all the cans outside the home were overflowing with garbage. Additionally, there were some really curious choices with furnishings and a general state of disrepair. A chair in one of the bedrooms upstairs looked broken and unsafe to sit in, several small windows in bedrooms didn’t have shades or curtains, and the window AC unit at the top of the stairs wasn’t sealed and had big air gaps on the sides. All the draperies were falling from their mounts to varying degrees. Several light fixtures either had missing bulbs, missing covers, or both. And the powder room downstairs had no hand towels and a broken toilet paper holder. Most of the rooms in general looked quite different from the photos on the AirBnB listing with small and large discrepancies of furniture; chairs different or missing altogether. These things make a big difference when you’re evaluating a home’s ability to host your 6-person party.
But the next point … the home was cold. The digital thermostat read 55 degrees on arrival and the heat was off. This was pretty surprising considering it still gets quite cold in Portland this time of year. We turned the heat on and began unpacking. An hour later, the downstairs radiant baseboard heaters were barely warm to the touch and the thermostat read 56. I messaged the host to make sure we hadn’t missed anything with being able to warm the house. We decided to leave to visit friends and grab a meal. Upon returning to the home approximately two hours later, the thermostat read 62. The temperature difference was barely noticeable downstairs, but upstairs the radiant heaters were only just barely starting to feel warm to the touch; the air upstairs was still quite chilly. At the time we went to bed, there was still no reply from the host about the heat.
The next morning, I received a message from the host asking if we’d settled in okay. I was initially optimistic, but turned out to be another automated message. The message where I’d asked about the heat was still marked “unread”. Without hearing from him at that time, we went about our plans in Portland. Upon returning to the house that afternoon, the downstairs finally felt comfortable but upstairs was still cold. We decided to move our stay to a hotel because the house was still uncomfortably cold and the host was still unresponsive - almost a full day after my message was sent. Upon check-in to the hotel, I sent one final message to the host informing him that we were not staying in the house that evening. We got another automated message that night about check-out but still no actual response from him.
Finally, at 2pm on Sunday, three hours after check-out, I finally got a message back from the host apologizing for missing my message about the heat and asking if we’d settled okay. And following that at 4pm, another automated message asking for a good review.
Had I been more thorough and read previous reviews, I’d have noticed that this responsiveness is par for the course and I would not have booked this house. The lack of attentiveness overall, the disrepair, the heating issue, and the discrepancies of house amenities really just seemed like the host is content to let an automated system do all the work of managing the listing instead of actually being a host. I understand that older homes with older climate control need time. But this reservation was made several weeks in advance so there was more than enough time to turn the heat on in advance of our arrival so the home would be comfortable.