For our holidays in Mexico City we reserved two apartments from Airbnb. About $800 USD for 17 nights. The dollars are gone, but the lodging was unacceptable. Neither of our apartments was ready to use when we arrived, we had to look (and pay) for other places to stay. To put it plainly – airbnb is a disaster, don’t believe the colorful pictures, the euphemistic descriptions. Never agree to “strict” cancellation rules because if you do, you’re really trapped. After almost 24 hours of travel to reach our destination we arrived about midnight in the first apartment. The fridge and kitchen cabinets were full of left-over food packages, the wardrobes were filled with used clothes, shoes and textiles of the “host”. Hair everywhere, on kitchen and bath towels, bed linen, sofa, carpets etc… it was disgusting. We did not even open our luggage and left the apartment immediately to look for a decent hotel. Because of the bad experience, we decided to have a look at the second apartment before moving in. The place was in a quite grubby district, the forecourt was full of construction waste and the apartment was 28 steep steps upstairs (for me an awkward challenge). None of this was mentioned at all in the description. To reach airbnb help you need a lot of time (and patience) to navigate through the site, through a lot of predefined answers only to get stuck in a dead end or circles. When you finally succeed, you should not really expect answers or support from airbnb. We have to add, to be fair, that after many arguments back and forth airbnb finally agreed to refund 270 USD. Obviously airbnb does not invest any time or money investigating to check their “hosts”, nor pictures and descriptions, nor the guests reviews to confirm their validity. The risk falls entirely on you, the guest!
