Airbnb in Colombia: Nearly Tazed by Property Owner

A small group of friends went to Medellín, Colombia for a quick getaway and good times. We rented the place about three weeks prior. Knowing that we wanted to party (make noise), we rented a house with no noise ordinance. The pictures appeared relatively decent. After the house was booked, it dawned on a few of us that there were really no common areas where we could hang out, which is what we wanted to do in the first place! So we emailed the host over three weeks and all she did was dissemble and evade us. When we arrived and voiced our dissatisfaction she continued to evade us. It was clear she had our money and had no intention of making us happy customers. She only paid us lip service. What was interesting was there were good reviews, which for the life of me, I still cannot understand. The breaking point for us was the fact that there was no air conditioning and the place was an oven. We found cockroaches in the kitchen and bedbugs.

We called Airbnb as per a friend’s recommendation and the customer service agent was very helpful. She did say they had an hour to rectify the issues. She did not rectify the issue and the reservation was cancelled and we were given a credit. Ok, phew! Let’s find a decent place. Well as we were packing up, some guy named Gino, who was visibly mad and speaking in perfect American English, knocked on the door, and identified himself as the owner of the building. He was with another guy and they were using walkie-talkies (strange in this day of cell phones). He told us to get out. When I noted we needed to pack our stuff, he said you have five minutes to get out. As we were preparing to leave one of the other people in the group saw a stun gun. Needless to say we hightailed it out of there and never looked back. This rental is way overpriced for Colombia: disgusting, dirty, shady, and DANGEROUS. Stay away from this rental and others run by the same people.