Tag Archives: airbnb check out time

After Night in Toronto, Never Booking Again

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I just stayed at an Airbnb for the first time on Halloween, in Toronto. I live in Toronto but wanted a place to stay downtown after going out. I only booked one night for me and my friend. In my request, I had mentioned that we might be checking out at 10:00 AM (check out is 11:00 AM) because of work the next day.

Upon check in, it took the front desk 15 minutes to open the door, and when we told them we were a “guest of [host]” she looked at us like we were crazy.

I said “for an Airbnb?”

She said “well do you have a key?”

Puzzled, we said no and she literally just told us to go upstairs, without showing our ID or anything. Later on, when I had another friend come by to do our makeup, they wouldn’t let her upstairs at all and insisted I come downstairs.

The place was honestly small, but it was cute. We got ready, had a few drinks and went out for the night. We came back to the condo early, because we honestly both don’t drink often and got pretty sick and wanted to sleep.

The next morning, I called in to work saying I would be starting at 1:00 PM instead. This was at 9:30 AM. My friend was still sleeping since she was a lot sicker than I was. When I got up and showered I noticed mold in the shower, which looked like they tried to cover it up.

As soon as I got out of the shower, at around 10:00 AM, I heard a knock on the door. The cleaners came early assuming we would have checked out at 10:00 AM. I kindly told them that there had been a change of plans and we need to stay until 11:00. This was mainly because we needed to clean up and pack, but my friend was still sick.

Now, I understand that I had mentioned to the host that I might check out early, but this does not change the check out time. Especially if it was only an hour difference and was never confirmed. I spent the next hour packing and cleaning up, the cleaners knocked on the door 15 minutes before 11:00 and my friend (who was sick) answered in, to be honest, a rude tone at first but then quickly apologized.

We talked to the cleaners for around 20 minutes before leaving. Well, they talked about nonsense to be honest. Now, the property may not have been sparkling clean, mostly because of all the sponges and counter towels left for cleaning smelled terrible, but the place was not “disgusting”.

This is what the host chose to write about my stay. He even accused us of chipping the porcelain in the bathroom. I don’t even know how that could even happen. He was petty, complaining about little things like coffee stains, shoe marks, stickiness on the counter or towels/sheets having makeup on them. Wouldn’t you have to wash them, anyway?

He wrote more than an essay on how disgusting we left the place, how we checked out twenty minutes late and made his cleaners wait an hour that he paid them for. He proceeded to over exaggerate so many things: the wrappers in the bedroom, and the ashes on the balcony (smoking on the balcony was allowed).

This guy literally disgraced my name on Airbnb and I only stayed one night. I barely had enough time to make a mess, let alone clean up. I was extremely rushed out during a hangover. In his review about me, he made it seem as though I missed work because of my “heavy drinking” and questioned my personal character. So uncalled for.

He then proceeded to BS how he paid his cleaners over $800 for three and a half hours of cleaning? Firstly, the cleaning ladies looked like they were his mom and grandmother based off of his picture, and secondly can I become his cleaner? What is that, $50 an hour? Pay me and I will leave the Airbnb spotless.

Jokes aside, you pay a service fee and a cleaning fee, and all of a sudden $130 a night is $250 and he wants the place spotless before I leave? I have to get on my hands and knees and scrub his damn floor? No thanks. Never again – back to hotels for me. As a suggestion to future renters of Airbnb, take pictures before and after you leave.

Airbnb Host Steals our Bags in Prague

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The day of our departure the host had a menacing and insulting attitude when we spoke by telephone. We missed the hour of check-out (Monday August 26th, 11:00 AM) that he had fixed some hours before (he sent me a message at 9:00 PM on Friday the 25th).

When we arrived at 12:30 PM to pick our bags (with our passports and all our personal belongings) and leave the keys for the flat, we found out that our bags had been taken away. In a panic (we thought that the bags were stolen), I phoned the host. He explained to me in a very rude way that, as retaliation for missing the check-out time, he had taken the bags.

He told me that, because of my mistake, he had lost 15 euros, and that now I had to pay for that. I apologized several times and told him that we needed our bags because we had our flight at 3:00 PM. He told me that he was busy with other clients and that he didn’t know exactly at what time he would arrive at the flat with our luggage. “Maybe in two hours,” he said.

He even hung up the phone rudely saying that he couldn’t waste more time with me, as he was with another client. I knew he was trying to frighten us, as he knew we had to catch a flight. We waited in the flat some minutes and then the cleaning lady arrived (the host didn’t even have the courage to give us our luggage personally).

My mistake was that I didn’t check my inbox on Friday the 25th, and so I didn’t know the exact hour of check-out. Nevertheless, this error doesn’t justify the host’s rude, menacing and overall illegal action (he temporarily took away our bags with our documents). We strongly discourage other Airbnb guests from booking this apartment.

Bully Host in Paris, Never Using Airbnb Again

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I returned from my trip to France and Germany about a week ago. For the first time I decided to try Airbnb. My boyfriend and I had used it several times during vacation in the US under his account, and never had an issue. Then, I opened my own account this time to give it a try. Apparently, the review system is a hot mess. I received at least ten emails reminding me to write a review upon returning home. Quite frankly, I had such a bad experience I thought I should just not review it at all: a situation where if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say it at all.

However, I went ahead and wrote a review with the positive aspects of the place, which in reality was a bargain for the location. When I read the host’s review, I found he had given me one star, saying that I was not pleasant, and that I was rude. I was shocked to read those words because I barely exchanged a word with him during my stay in the place, and when we left, he was all giggles and smiles with my boyfriend. It took a lot from me not to tell him what I was thinking about his demeanor.

I am a straightforward person. When things are not good anymore, I just remain silent. I cannot fake being happy with a situation if I am not. This man was the king of fake; in fact, that was the whole issue. He pretended to be okay, and he faked being accommodating. He stressed us so much, and he basically ruined our romantic weekend.

I travel to Paris regularly, and normally use Booking.com or TripAdvisor (and believe me, I do regret not using those for this trip as well). My suspicions of making a mistake started when just a couple of days prior to the trip I did not hear anything from my host. I proceeded to message “her” through the app to arrange our meeting. To my surprise, I was contacted by a man. He replied to my message the day before my trip excusing himself already for replying late (first picture). I was wondering why the listed female host was not responding, but I figured this person was somehow related to her. I did not think much of it, and he requested we use WhatsApp to communicate. I agreed to it, but I assumed he did not have a clue about how cell phones work, because my American phone would only work in wifi friendly areas in France.

We originally sat up a time of 6:00 PM to meet at the place, but as soon as I landed in CDG, I received a message from my boyfriend who was flying from Germany to join me on the weekend trip, telling me Eurowings had a delay of an hour, and we would need to change the check-in time. I did that right away: contacted the host to let him know we would be arriving an hour later than arranged due to a situation beyond my control (second picture). His response to me was the following “Umm, okay – is there any chance you can come beforehand? The apartment is all ready to go and I have the keys. But I do have other plans tonight and had arranged around 6:00 PM.”

Who in their right mind would ask a woman that just traveled eight hours to come and meet beforehand with a male host (not the listed female host), and leave her boyfriend hanging in the airport? Thanks to some miracle, we both arrived at the place at 6:45 PM. At this point my boyfriend, who happens to have a European cellphone, was in constant contact with the host (fifth picture). He was pretending to be cool with the situation, but stressed us out so much by telling us he had to go due to his prior social plans. I had offered to meet him in another part of the city to pick up the keys since I mentioned I was familiar with Paris in my precious texts. He said it was no big deal, and that he would wait.

He was not accommodating at all. When we arrived, I was very tired, and disappointed at him for harassing us. I was very quiet and short. Before he left, I asked, when should we check out, to which he verbally responded: “We will sort it out. I will contact you guys.”

My boyfriend had mentioned at that point that we would like to leave around 1:30 PM because we had bags, and we wanted to go straight to the airport. He said that would work, and still he would contact us. The day before we left, there was no check-out information (sixth picture). It was around 7:21 PM when I told my boyfriend to contact the host since we had not heard from him at all. We had thought that the check-out time would be sometime around 1:30 PM, per our conversation.

Sadly, once again, this host was trying to pull a fast one bullying us. He said that we needed to be checked out by 10:00 AM because he had another person coming in at 11:00 AM. My boyfriend and I went back to the Airbnb website and looked at the listed times for check-in and check-out. “Sophie”, the host we never laid eyes on, listed 11:00 AM for checking out. My boyfriend pointed this out very politely to him, saying we would be ready at that time, as it was indicated in their Airbnb listing (eighth picture).

If you go to the property’s link now, that he has skillfully changed the check out time to 10:00 AM. Thank god for cell phones and the ability to take screen shots. At that point, we thought things were cool, and I actually prepared to leave the place in excellent condition. He failed to mention this in his very objective review. When he arrived in the morning, he was all smiles, and frankly, by then I was extremely dissatisfied with the whole experience. I avoided eye contact with him, and exited as soon as I was able to. However, he made small chat with my boyfriend and walked us out. It occurred to me he was so fake because he was there with the next host.

I forgot to mention he was late once again. Seems like that is his MO. But god forbid someone has a delay in flights that might interfere with his dinner plans. I do not understand what he meant in his review when he is talking about me being unpleasant and rude when he tried to bully us, and he failed at hosting. I am a psychotherapist, and it occurred to me that he might need a psychological evaluation.

I hoped to get a hold of the famous “Sophie” host. I sent a message through Airbnb, but of course Sophie is just a front, because the truth is this guy was in charge of the listing. As for the place, it looked like a storage room that had been conditioned for the sole purpose of renting it. There was no electrical outlet in the bathroom, so I did my hair with my hair iron plugged in the living room. The “bed” was an ungodly uncomfortable couch, and there was no temperature control in the room at all. The electrical breakers for the whole building are in the apartment, and there is no smoke detector alarm.

I hope people thinking about renting this place read my review. I am a world traveler, and have never had such an unpleasant experience. I guess that is what I get for using Airbnb. I should have stayed with Booking.com or TripAdvisor, which I will do for my next trip. I sure hope my next journey to Paris is more pleasant, and erases this terrible experience. Maybe my story will save you some heartache, and aggravation. I hope you don’t have to deal with this man.

Airbnb Guest Snuck Boyfriend into Room Overnight

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I hosted someone from Airbnb on February 10th. He asked me if his boyfriend could check in earlier; usually I allow guests to check in at 3:00 PM but I was flexible so I let him do it at 1:30. An hour later a friend of his boyfriend came over with his things; he told us he was looking for a hotel. When I arrived that night I thought they were sleeping, and in the morning I knocked on the door at the check out time (12:00 PM). No one answered so I opened the door and found a condom in the bed, drugs, and the belongings of the friend that was supposedly looking for a hotel. They weren’t there. His things are still here, they have the key of my house, they don’t answer the phone, and I’m feeling insecure because I don’t know these people and when they are going to come and give me the key. I need Airbnb to respond as soon as possible to this abuse. I need an answer and a solution right now. I don’t want anyone breaking into my house. I can’t even rent the room with the mess that these people left in my house.

Crazy Host POUNDS on the Door for a Simple Message

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Airbnb sent me a review reminder stating clearly that I had through September 9th to post it; I tried to do so and the website wouldn’t let me post a review. When I spoke to customer service on the phone the agent said that there is absolutely nothing they can do to help: the company’s program code is the code; this is just the way it is and there’s nothing anyone can do to change anything in it (and it was more than clear none of them care to, no matter what problems it results in). The email reminder I received gave the wrong information, since in reality, customers only have 14 days on the clock to submit reviews, starting from some nebulous time of day that was never made clear to me throughout the entire 24-minute conversation. In short, their website actually shut off the possibility to post my review sometime part way through the 9th. When I said that sending emails with dated statements like the one I got is plain misleading, the agent repeatedly weaseled out of agreeing and kept either referring to the company’s terms of service – which according to him mean we agreed to everything and anything the company does – or saying the meaningless phrase “I respect your opinion” and nothing else, in an annoyed tone that made it more than clear that he absolutely does not.

There isn’t even any option to file complaints at this company; they only “take suggestions.” You can probably guess how likely I think it is that they ever do anything about any of these suggestions. In short, sometime back in the dark ages they had programmers do the original code on their website, and ever since then everything is set in stone. They just don’t feel like paying anyone to do any additional work to fix anything, and never will.

Why do I want to post this review so much? I had a hellish experience that ruined nearly my entire vacation, and I wanted to warn other users from suffering the same fate. It was so bad that I needed a lengthy mental break after this so-called vacation and didn’t feel emotionally ready to compose my review and go over the whole traumatic experience again until the last day – what should have been the last day I could post it where it rightfully belongs, on that host’s listing.

Below is the original review I was going to post with a 1-star rating. However, I’d like to add something here I didn’t write in the original review because it seemed almost too crazy to be believable, given that this host (somehow) has a very high rating on Airbnb. About a day before I was scheduled to leave the place, the host came up and suddenly started pounding on the suite’s door, shaking the wall so strongly that I thought she must have been using a bat or a brick. As I was in the bathroom at the time, I was unable to come to the door for 4-5 minutes. She kept pounding on the door nonstop the entire time, so violently I was certain she was going to break it down; it seemed she really intended to do so. The noise and duration of it, even through my earplugs, was sheerly unbelievable. The experience for me was like unexpectedly finding myself in a scene from a movie when police are trying to break down a reinforced door. Just about the last thing you want or expect to experience on any vacation. I thought for certain there must, surely, be some terrible emergency going on to justify her doing something so unprofessional and frightening to a paying guest.

When I answered the door (as soon as I humanly could and wearing only a towel), I was first shocked that the woman turned out to not be holding some sort of blunt object with which she’d been performing that violent pounding, and secondly that her hands were not bleeding from it. I asked her if there was some kind of emergency. She said “no,” with an oddly matter-of-fact tone and facial expression of the kind you’d expect to get from a neighbor who’s politely asking to borrow a cup of sugar after having daintily and briefly knocked on your front door – as if what she just did was absolutely normal and she does it all the time. She claimed she was only “concerned” that I hadn’t answered her numerous calls, texts and emails. She didn’t apologize for the insane pounding or seem to realize that she’d just done anything odd.

It became clear during the following conversation that this entire scary episode was only because she wanted to know exactly when I was leaving; she wanted me to clear out as early as possible the next day so she could have time to bring in cleaners before the next guest showed up. She told me that the check out time was 11:00 and I should leave by then, even though her listing clearly states that it’s 12:00. Apparently it was my problem that she had back-to-back guests and scheduling difficulties. The weirdness and unprofessionalism was plain astonishing given the very large number of years she’d been renting out the place, and just how much money I’d paid for this rental in a private residence. She sent a terribly phony sounding apology a full two days after the incident (half blaming me for not answering her mountain of calls and messages on my vacation), clearly because she was wary of a very justifiable negative review or even a complaint to the website.

This incident was just the icing on top of an entire cake of unpleasant things that filled my stay at this place. The original review:

Well, it is a beautiful house, and it is actually within close walking distance of Middlebury town center, the university, etc. (unlike many other Airbnb offers in the area that claim to be close and turn out to be miles away.) & the 2-room suite looks nice. The bathroom also looks nice but certainly not close to hotel standards, as some of the plumbing is noticeably old: the toilet has to be flushed multiple times. Shampoo, conditioner & bodywash are provided, but the towels are the most harshly starched, wooden pieces of fabric I’ve ever touched anywhere – bringing your own is a must. More significantly, if you’re looking for a restful vacation, you’re highly unlikely to get it staying here: – The bedroom has no blackout curtains like in hotels and the windows face east: in summer that means you get to wake up around 5:30 am and be tired all day, every day. – The house is on a heavily used road and traffic starts up early: heavy, noisy trucks and the like drive by all day. – There are frequent emergency sirens heard as well – surprise: the place is near a police station. – There’s a very active business running in this house: employees and customers are in and out all day during the week, including on the 2nd floor right next to the guest suite; the acoustics and creaky wood floors of the house mean that you get to hear non-stop noise anytime you’re there morning to evening.

After I left I discovered a small mountain of emails, calls and texts – some sent before 6:00 AM; I’m glad I had my cell silenced – that the host sent me during the last two days of my stay, most of them desperately wanting to know when exactly I was leaving (apparently they’re not even aware of their own listed check-out time). I didn’t see these at the time as I don’t check my phone or email while I’m on vacation – being as it is, in fact, vacation. But you can judge for yourself how pleasant that kind of thing will be when you’re meant to be resting and relaxing on your rare time off. I would have thought that a note under the door would have sufficed for any urgent communication – like they do in hotels – and been more sensible and professional.