I made a reservation for May 25th, 2018 in Oslo, Norway for July 31st to August 3rd. The reservation was confirmed by the proprietor. The printout provided showed an attractive room but did not give further details. We finally managed to find the address but to our surprise no one was present to let us in. We then called the host on her mobile and were told by her to report to her place of work, which we found with difficulty.
We received a set of keys and returned to the property through a front door marked with nasty graffiti and were shocked to find that no cleanup had been done by the owners. Dirty linen was in the bathroom, kitchen and bedroom, with a dozen pair of shoes lying in the corner of the entry room. Even more shocking was finding a ladder without a handrail required to reach a mattress lying on the floor which one would have to crawl to in order to gain access; the ceiling height was only about a meter.
There was also dirty linen covering the bed. None of the bedroom features were mentioned in the email we had received from the host confirming our reservation. It would have been dangerous to navigate the ladder at night if one was to access the bathroom on the lower floor. Accordingly, we did not check in and notified the host and Airbnb of our concerns. We found alternative accommodations with difficulty at a busy time in Oslo.
Airbnb’s response has been really poor and unprofessional. There have been long waiting times with chats with people from California to the Philippines. We were assigned a case manager who expressed concern. Since we did not receive follow up on several phone calls – always being connected with a different person who promised that our case manager would get back to us – we have become very frustrated since a full refund has been requested given the dirty premises and equally the very dangerous and poor quality of the accommodations.
I can guarantee that I will never engage the services of Airbnb and will let my friends and family know of our concerns. I may also seek legal advice to settle this outrageous problem to our satisfaction.What a scam.
Mark Beard – that’s not always the case. You can’t always trust positive reviews. I stayed at a cottage recently and whilst the outside was beautiful, the interior was dated and smelled musty everywhere to the point we couldn’t use any of the closets and feared for our health. Yet all of their reviews were positives with promises to return. I wonder if they get their friends to sign up and leave reviews. There were a couple local reviews which would make me think that was the case.
It’s always a gamble when you book a room whether the accommodation looks like the photos, even with hotels. However, legal hotels and bnbs are generally running a professional business and may have dozens if not more reviews by paying guests who will have had similar expectations to yours. AirBnB is different in that guests generally may have lower expectations since they know many places are not a hotel (even though there are plenty of people who do not even live in the accommodation and only own it to let it out) and that they will likely have to deal with staying in someone’s actual home. I also found that host and guest may not actually give an honest review after the stay since they don’t want to get a negative in return even if their negative review was accurate.
Hi Alexis. With Airbnb the reviews are not visible until both the host and the guest has left a review. So when you leave a review it’s not possible to know in advance what the guest or host has said in their review. Both guests and hosts have 14 days to leave a review. As an Airbnb Superhost with over 850 positive reviews, I would strongly suggest that guests DO NOT book accommodation without there being several very positive reviews about the listing. We travel exclusively using Airbnb and have found fantastic value with fantastic people.