Tag Archives: airbnb dirty

Airbnb Sides With Host in Nearly All Cases

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My husband and I were looking forward to a hassle-free stay at a beautiful converted barn in Dorking. We were heading to England for a family wedding and wanted somewhere close to the venue so we could have a few drinks and a short inexpensive cab ride back to our lodgings. By renting a large enough place, we were able to have family join in to share the cost and have more time together. The listing for the barn on Airbnb showed a welcoming, relaxed atmosphere and fit the criteria for location and amount of people it could accommodate. My husband went through Airbnb and booked it for Friday, July 7 and Saturday, July 8, 2017.

Prior to our arrival my husband saw a review about the property that made us question whether we wanted to stay there. He emailed the host with his concerns about the lack of cleanliness and she assured him the clients were lying and they had tried to have more people stay than was allowed.

On Friday, we helped with some set up at the wedding venue and were looking forward to hot showers and relaxing at the barn before a night out . The coordinates we were given brought us to a beautiful Airbnb but unfortunately it was not the property we booked. We spent the next 1.5 hours on the phone, using our data by the side of the road trying to find the place. By the time we found it, we were frustrated. Then we pulled into the parking lot beside a garbage pile.

After a tour of the rustic barn, the first sitting area looked fine. Then we passed down a hallway with a cot in it beside a bathroom, the bedroom that was supposed to be an ensuite. We entered the main room which was spacious and could have been wonderful. There were dirty ripped chairs around the table and furniture that was more suited for a frat house. This was not the furniture from the photos on Airbnb. We were worried about sitting on it because it looked unsanitary. The kitchen was small and the carpet was filthy along with the refrigerator.

Upstairs in the loft was an open area considered to be one of the four bedrooms mentioned with three beds, some with linens and some without. There was a shelf with what looked like black mold and a table with crumbs from previous tenants. Some cobwebs were also present. Next we saw an actual bedroom and it was well presented except for the dirty floors. The final and fourth bedroom had two single beds. When we lifted the linens to check for bugs we found insect shell-like casings.

That was really the last straw. When my husband spoke with the host to point out our concerns she was very contradictory. We were honestly worried about bringing our suitcases in and getting bed bugs that would then be brought anywhere we stayed after that and then to our homes. We decided we were not staying at this property and we did not check in. Now we needed somewhere to stay for two nights.

She offered to bring in a cleaner and switch out furniture from her home (this is what she should have done before we arrived). Now we know she used that as her argument with Airbnb. She told them she tried to fix our concerns and we refused. First of all, a reputable host takes pride in her property and ensures it is clean and safe before new tenants arrive. Secondly, no cleaning company could have solved a mold and bed bug issue in a short visit. I guess we were supposed to sit in our car by the garbage heap while all this wonderful cleaning happened. If she felt her home furnishings were more suitable than they should have been in the barn to begin with. The doors didn’t lock and the property looked tired. It in no way resembled the quaint, rustic conversion depicted in her photos on the website.

We had already paid Airbnb approximately $880 (Canadian). We would have split that three ways, two couples and one single, so $176 each person. Then we paid approximately $600 for two nights for three rooms for a total of $1800. The nightmare ended up costing the five of us approximately $2680 total. We have lost way too much considering the host misrepresented herself. She is smug because Airbnb has sided with her so far. She has an unacceptable listing and is still taking in money without even having tenants; that’s a good gig.

Airbnb has been difficult to deal with. They sided with the host because she offered to “rectify” our concerns. She has posted a reply to our review that states we are lying and that my husband is a disagreeable and spoiled man. The Airbnb customer service representative feels she has rectified the situation and sent us an email with her decision. They have not put us through to a new case manager even though I called to reopen the case and was told I would hear from someone by the end of the day on July 21st. It is now July 25th and no one has contacted us. I think they hope we will go away. Sadly, Airbnb lacks true customer service when service is needed. They should be ashamed to allow someone like this host to represent their company. She is abusing their lack of control over listings and taking her word that she meets their criteria.

Ripped off in Brussels after Host’s False Claims

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Recently I had an experience that will make me reconsider ever using Airbnb again. I have been coming to Brussels for work on regular basis, usually renting a room and meeting a real Airbnb host. I never had a problem, and always exchanged positive and genuine reviews. Recently I had to stay longer. Therefore I brought my little daughter with me and an au pair, and to play it safe decided to splurge on a nice apartment in a safe neighborhood. I paid 1000 EUR for 11 days in a one-bedroom apartment, and chose a nine-time verified host.

When we arrived there was no host – just a key in a safety lock. There was no bedroom either, just an alcove off the main living space that contained a kitchenette in one corner and a bathroom in the other corner of what once was a very grand parlor. The apartment had stale air, a lot of grime and dust, electricity provided by extension cords as the wall sockets did not work, a door handle falling off, a non-working stove, and no real bed frames but sort of collapsible beds in the middle of the room (the parlor had ornate, curvy walls – there was not a clean line long enough to put a bed against it).

The host warned us in advance very politely that the stove was not working; after one look at it, it was obvious that it had not worked since the 1980’s. It was a big hassle to have it repaired or replaced, so the host tried to shift the responsibility on us, via phone and email. We never really met him. I had the impression he was running the place, or rather several places (as he said in an email), on behalf of someone else. In the middle of the first week the legs on one of the collapsible beds started falling off – probably because they did not fit the frame and were fastened with the plastic tape. Foolishly I just propped the bed with my suitcase, not willing to enter into another marathon of email excuses which took, in case of the stove, three days. The host was relentless in his correspondence.

Working from 9:00 to 18:30, with two people depending on me for everything, I had no energy or time to look for another apartment. We left very early on the final day, not having seen our host. A couple days later, I received a request for 15 EUR for the new bed legs. I refused, and got myself into trouble. Next came the request for 80 EUR. I refused again, pointing out that the damage was already done and patched up with sellotape. The host then blamed it on a previous guest, claiming he had not noticed, but did not retract the claim.

To make a long story short, the Airbnb dispute resolution board sided with the host. Which makes me wonder – how do they verify the hosts ? Who deals with the disputed issues – is it some real guy or an algorithm? There were obvious loopholes in our host’s arguments. He proved to be not completely honest from the beginning, but also very polite and knew how to use the right words (“never in my life”, “hundreds of happy guests”, “in all of my apartments”, etc.) or rather how to work the system. What also made me angry was the fact that the damage compensation was charged to my credit card by Airbnb UK Limited couple of hours before the dispute decision arrived from the Airbnb Sydney unit. This seems to have gone very far from the notion of a simple platform linking authentic hosts and guests together.

Apartment Above Turned into Airbnb, Ruined Everything

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This spring my landlord decided to terminate my upstairs neighbor’s contract and let out the flat on Airbnb. The reason was plausible: she wants to use the apartment when visiting from overseas and needs the flexibility. The apartment is being rented out on Airbnb now by a third party who manages about 15 other properties around our region (a big touristy region in the Alps which is very popular in summer).

Despite having an arrangement that the guests are supposed to arrive by 9:00 PM and be quiet by 10:00 PM, reality is totally different. Most of the guests completely ignore the arrival time and then because they must have major jet lag, stay up half the night crashing around the kitchen, walking up and down, and generally being a pain. Since the minimum stay is only three nights and they can use Instant Book. We get all the people that couldn’t give a toss about anyone else. I often get no more than two hours of sleep a night and have to scream and shout at them and bang on the walls.

Why?

Because we live in an old wooden chalet where you can hear everything. Life is hell. I hate Airbnb and the whole business it has morphed in to the past few years. It has nothing to do with the original idea. Where I live, everyone is getting on the bandwagon; homes are being bought up and rented out on Airbnb. They guests arrive at all hours, can’t figure out where they’re supposed to go, Walk into other people’s houses, leave their trash everywhere, and put out cigarettes in the garden. All these little things become so annoying over time. I wish someone would clamp down and regulate it more.

Worst Airbnb Host Ever Almost Ruined My Vacation

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I stayed with a host who is quite literally one of the most unpleasant human beings I have ever encountered. How she has any good Airbnb reviews is beyond me. Her communication skills are beyond deplorable. The following review is for this listing in Tokyo. I noticed that she was very rude when I first asked her if it would be possible to check in early. A simple “no” would have sufficed; instead, she went on a rant. Given that she is Japanese, I brushed this rudeness off as her not being familiar with the English language and maybe she didn’t understand the underlying connotations of the words she was using. That was a mistake.

We arrived at the apartment, which looked like an absolute pigsty. See the attached photos. It was absolutely disgusting and not even the same apartment that was listed on the website. The host lied, in that it was not her apartment. I say lied because the key was in a specific mailbox with a code that she had given us, so it was practically impossible that we “by chance” got the wrong key and went to the wrong apartment. She kept lying and trying to blame us for her mistake. She also never offered to come help us. In fact, in the beginning we couldn’t even get in touch with her. Instead her husband who spoke no English was answering the phone.

Eventually, after a 21-hour flight I was fed up and went to a hotel. Then I proceeded to call Airbnb for a refund. It took over an hour to get my refund but finally the Airbnb case manager discovered that it was her apartment and that she had double booked it. Because it was her fault, Airbnb forced her to give me a refund. Afterwards, she left me a negative review. Why she was able to review me when the reservation was cancelled is beyond me. I had to call Airbnb to get that fixed as well.

Needless to say I will never use Airbnb again. Just realize that if something like this happens they pretty much leave you high and dry. The host should apologize for what she did but is such a horrible human she never will. She is lucky I didn’t leave a review on Airbnb and ruin her obviously fake reviews.

Airbnb Studio in Beacon Hill Makes Guests Sick

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My wife and I booked a stay at a Beacon Hill area studio in the city of Boston recently and we had a horrible experience. The experience was so bad that it will make us reconsider ever using Airbnb again as guests. Although we really like the idea of Airbnb and we have been strong supporters, we feel that we will likely be victimized by the poor way that Airbnb operates in dealing with guest complaints. We’ll likely lose a bit of money and be left out in the cold even though we have been champions for Airbnb and have contributed to their bottom line.

The listing we booked presented the rental as the “Perfect Little Stay in Beacon Hill”. The unit was everything but perfect; it was overpriced, tiny, not clean, and not safe for us at all health wise. We have been using Airbnb as hosts for some time now and we’ve had nothing but wonderful experiences with the guests who have stayed with us. The guests love our property and the services we provide and we love having them. These experiences led us to try out Airbnb as guests. This turned out to be a huge mistake.

We selected the Boston property because of its location. Beacon Hill is a nice area – we figured – and the few photos online for the property looked good, though there were no photos of the building, which should have been a red flag. We communicated with the manager of the property online before arriving (initially asking if they had availability for a second night and if there was a place we could drop off a bag before checking in) and those communications went smoothly. So far so good.

However, when we arrived, things started to go bad from the start. We were a bit surprised by the overall condition of the building: the front door had a missing lock, the entrance was extremely dirty and in need of repair, there were boxes all over the entrance that we had to climb over, trash bags and laundry bags were piled all over the place, and there were big stains all over the carpet. It had the overall appearance of a drug dealer’s apartment.

We found the key and went to the unit only to discover that the door was unlocked. We dropped off our bag, but as we tried to lock the door we discovered that there were problems with the lock. Fortunately as we were leaving, the cleaning person came by. We showed him the lock problems and he told us that he would take care of it. He struggled with the lock as well and finally was able to latch it. This made us wonder about the security of the building and the bag that we were going to store.

Our first impression of the property was that it looked like poorly managed student housing – cheap, dark, dingy, not decorated well, very bare bones – not something you’d typically expect to see in a nice area like Beacon Hill. However, we figured this is what we selected and we’d make the most of it. Unfortunately, things got a lot worse. I came back to the room in the later afternoon to rest up. The room had been cleaned, but I was really surprised by the condition of the room. It was very tiny, poorly decorated, dark, no frills, had lots of wear (the wood floor was badly scarred up, stains on the bathroom walls, the shower had mold, a window was painted over with latex paint, there was caulk peeling in the bathroom, the view outside the window was of things being dumped in the alley).

I was hoping that my wife wouldn’t be disappointed when she got there and really took a look around. Again, these aesthetic issues were only the tip of the iceberg. After resting in the room for a couple of hours and turning the A/C on, I started to get very ill. I started having trouble breathing, was very congested, developed a bad headache, and felt nauseous. When my wife got there I felt really bad so she took a look around. She noticed several gallons of chemical products and garbage bags of stuff strewn about the stairways directly outside our room. She also noticed some odd chemical smells. We also were concerned about the condition of the A/C as it had some moldy odors. The longer we stayed in the room, the worse we felt.

My wife suggested we go out for dinner to get out of the room and get some fresh air. We did and after about an hour I started to feel better. My wife suggested that we go look for a hotel to stay the rest of the night. Fortunately, we were able to get a booking at the Bostonian, not far away. We went back to the room and my wife made me stay out on the street as she went back in and packed up our things and took all of the bedding off of the bed as we were instructed to do by the printed house rules. We never really used the property, such as the shower or fridge, as we spent so little time there. We were basically in panic mode because of the condition of the building and the fact that the building and room were making us sick. The whole experience felt like a frightening Steven King short story.

Fortunately, we had a good stay at the Bostonian. We checked in around midnight, though this set us back as the last minute booking was very expensive. I feel that we made the right call as one’s health, safety, and well being should always come first. As bad as the limited experience with the property was (poor condition, toxic environment, false advertising, etc.) what was even more troubling was the reaction and later communication with the property manager who listed the property.

I sent her a message in the morning as soon as I got up to tell her about how the property made us ill. In one message she seemed concerned but then in another message she seemed to be blaming us for the situation. This is very wrong to do from a hospitality standpoint, something a professional would never do. I didn’t go into a lot of details about the poor condition of the property, but did tell her we couldn’t stay in the unit and had to move to a hotel because of the condition of the property as something in the room or building was making us ill.

I wanted to give the host an opportunity to address the problem as I would if I were a host and one of my guests with a problem contacted me. She responded by saying that she would look into the matter and she offered to provide us with a 50% refund. We never actually asked for a refund; we just sent her a note about the problem we had with staying in the room. I did respond to her to indicate that her refund offer would be acceptable since we didn’t spend the night there.

She then turned around and changed her mind later in the day (after the Airbnb 24-hour complaint policy would expire) about providing a refund, indicating that she felt we did stay here, which of course was not true. So basically after all of the abuse we suffered by staying here, she conned us. It became clear later that she was just working the Airbnb policy system about guest complaints to her advantage.

For anyone who gets in this situation, be very careful. Make sure you find some way to contact management at Airbnb management immediately instead of trying to work out things with an unprofessional host who can take advantage of you. For this experience from hell we paid over $260 for a one-night booking. This property had a serious environmental problem that effected our health. The host was not forthright and in our opinion was using Airbnb to operate as a slumlord.

My wife took a lot of pictures of the condition of the property and we have our hotel bill to show that we did not spend the night there. We are trying to make an official complaint to Airbnb management to see if they can step in and provide some remedy, but from my quick research this is probably not very likely or will take massive effort on my part. Problems like this hurt the Airbnb experience for all of us. I really believe that Airbnb management needs to screen hosts better. I was always very honest and professional in my communications with this host, who unfortunately did not operate with the same standards.

My best advice after having quite a bit of experience operating as an Airbnb host is that you have to be very careful when you rent a property as a guest. Airbnb seems mainly concerned about protecting hosts and not guests. They seem to make it really difficult for guests to contact Airbnb and make complaints. If an unprofessional host takes advantage of a guest there’s not much a guest can do to get satisfaction, especially if the host is not honest and professional. Evidentially this will come back to haunt Airbnb. Just look at what’s happened to Uber and the company’s CEO.

I have one last point to make, and this is a very important one. In the earlier days of Airbnb many of the rentals listed were made available by actual owners of properties who took some care and pride in what they offered. This is really changing in a big way. Many listings that show up now (especially in competitive larger cities) are by sales people and shady real estate people just trying to make a quick buck by renting inferior properties by the night. They do not offer any kind of hospitality; they just want to make a big profit and exploit the marketplace. My wife calls these new generation of operators “Airbnb Slumlords.”

If you see a host like this offering so many properties with limited photos and generic descriptions, be very careful. After looking closer into the situation we encountered in Boston, I realized that this is what happened to us. The person we dealt with was operating as an agent with a group of others, marking up inferior properties, and trying to take advantage of less experienced guests. So called “hosts” like this know how to work the online sources such as Airbnb to their advantage. As a guest, be really careful as this will likely become a much bigger problem with Airbnb. It could really hold back Airbnb’s growth if they don’t find a good way to deal with this problem. I will certainly spend countless hours contacting Airbnb and trying to inform the public about my experience and knowledge. Maybe something good will come of it. I’d love to hear from others about their stories related to this.

Dirty Apartment, Stayed for One Hour, No Help from Airbnb

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I’m complaining big time today. I am deleting my Airbnb account now. What a shame. My sister and I travelled to LA to celebrate her birthday with family and friends and we booked an apartment in Hollywood with two reviews (now we know: red flag). Everything seemed okay until we were in the apartment checking to ensure everything was nice and clean (as usual when staying at an Airbnb or hotel) and we found dirty and stained sheets and pillows, hair in the fridge, a full trash can, and dust in the living room area.

We contacted the host (never got in contact with her; it was always the boyfriend) and never heard from either of them. We called Airbnb and they said we’d be relocated within thirty minutes. At that point, it was approximately 5:30 PM. Thirty minutes went by and we were still waiting to be relocated, so we called again, and again, almost every hour because Airbnb would either keep us on hold for 40+ minutes at a time, or say someone else would call back. It was a really frustrating situation.

It was 1:00 AM and we still had not been relocated. Of course we ended up booking a hotel room. What kind of customer service is this? There has still been no refund, and we never heard from Airbnb regarding a solution. They said our case would be closed because we didn’t have enough proof… we had more than ten pictures of the gross apartment. I do not recommend Airbnb to anyone. Needless to say, we still enjoyed our trip and didn’t allow this experience to ruin our stay in LA. We’re still working to get Airbnb to refund us for staying in a dirty apartment for one hour, as we paid for four nights. Airbnb Hell indeed.

The Airbnb was booked through my sister’s account. Also, the host’s boyfriend accused us of stealing an Xbox. None of us care for an Xbox, and truly don’t even know what it even looks like. He stated he submitted a police report in LA; Airbnb told us the same thing. He is now requesting $200 from us.

Dirty Airbnb House Not Suitable for Children or Adults

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We rented a house in Massachusetts for $4,500 for one week for the entire family: adult children and grandchildren. The host told me we could enter the night before our start date. I thanked him and said my son would probably do that. At 2:30 AM, my son arrived at the host’s house. Early Saturday morning my son called me and said he was very disturbed by the condition of the house. He hadn’t even wanted to sleep there with his wife and three small children but felt he couldn’t find a hotel in the middle of the night. He reported to me that the house was not reflective of the pictures on the Airbnb website: it was dirty and in disrepair.

I phoned the host and told him what my son had reported, saying we could not stay in the house. Almost immediately he said he would return our money. Additionally, he said he’d drive from Boston and meet me there at 12:30. At 12:30, the host and a companion of his met me at the house. I was distraught over not only the inside but the outside of the house. It did not look like the Airbnb picture; it was overgrown with weeds, some of them four or five feet tall around the garage door. The three of us entered the house, and there was no resemblance to the pictures of the house I rented.

The host asked me to show him exactly what I was unhappy about, which I did. As a result, he got angry and said I was rude. All I did was document the condition of the house as he had asked. As an aside, I am not a rude person; I’m a psychologist and I’m accustomed to dealing with all kinds of people. My son arrived while we were going through the house. We continued to cite the unacceptable conditions of the house.

When the conversation became heated, I asked the host for our money back. His companion said: “Just give them their money back”. He said he would but we had to “cancel the reservation right now so I can rent it.”

My son and I went out to our cars and immediately canceled the reservation. I had no contact with the host after that morning. He was supposed to refund $500. We’re in a resolution dispute with Airbnb. They have not responded to phone calls and emails were returned as ‘Airbnb did not receive this email’. I believe that at one time this was a nice house and actually looked like the photos on Airbnb; however, it has been abused and neglected. It has not been thoroughly cleaned in a very long time as indicated by the considerable thick dust on top of the refrigerator and other areas. The insects, mold, and broken moldings, as well as the state of general disrepair are not only a health hazard but a safety hazard. I have 38 photos of mold, insects and filthy broken furniture. Screens with holes big enough for a child to climb through. I want my money back. My biggest frustration is that Airbnb will not respond.

My Trip Motto: Expect to be Disappointed with Airbnb

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We went south of the U.S. for a once-in-a-lifetime trip. The host had good reviews but I had a different experience. It was so hot and humid, there were strange odors of mildew and urine, and the phone, wifi, and TV didn’t work. The fridge was moldy. I was afraid to touch anything. The worst part was when the owner came down and apologized if I saw him looking in my window: “I wanted to see if you were there.”

At the time I thought it was an honest mistake, though he could have knocked on the door. I was a little freaked out but figured he wouldn’t have said anything if he meant to be sneaky. Then I turned around and saw his friend, with a drink in one hand and a beer in the other and he was clearly drunk. There I was in a foreign country standing between a drunk guy and a peeping tom. I was told there’d be wifi but it never worked for me.

This was all happening on my birthday. I couldn’t call, text, or email anybody. It was the worst, loneliest birthday in all my 51 years of life. I left early. Kudos to Airbnb for cancelling my reservation for the rest of the week but now the hosts are upset that they were only paid for two nights instead of seven. It sucks for the hosts, too. I’m sure they don’t understand my consternation. I’m sure they’ll give me a bad review but I don’t care because Airbnb and I are never ever getting back together.

Will Never Use Airbnb Again After Construction

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I used Airbnb for the first time a week again and I will never use them again. The studio we rented was totally misrepresented. When we arrived at the rental, we discovered the building was a construction site. The hallways and stairwells were being decorated and the floors tiled. There was dust everywhere, building materials on the landings and stairwells, doors held open with fire extinguishers, and bags of rubbish left in the halls. There were workmen coming and going, and they were grouting the hall outside the rental while we were there.

The studio rental was also directly above a nightclub. The host gave no indication of the nightclub in the description and at no point contacted me beforehand to let me know about or apologise for the building work. In addition, the keypad system to enter the building stopped working. We were in fact locked out of the rental on our first evening. It was late and only by the sheer luck of another resident turning up with a key were we able to re-enter the building and get back to our belongings. I emailed and left a voicemail for the host the following morning about this issue and to date he has still not had the decency to contact me. Fortunately the estate agent next door that managed flats in the building was able to get us a key. However this took over an hour of our time, during which we could not leave for fear of not being able to re-enter.

As soon as I returned I logged an issue with the resolution centre. Again, the host has not had the decency to respond to me. I have now forwarded my issue to Airbnb directly, and despite a standard response saying I would be contacted within 24 hours, I have not had any communication from them. Previously I have used Booking.com and Hotels.com for both personal and work travel and I will be staying with them from now on. They are both excellent services that Airbnb could learn a lot from.

Horrible Host and Pathetic Customer Service

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I checked into an Airbnb on June 12th, 2017. There were a few issues that I realised were not advertised on the Airbnb listing. The “The Chinese spa style bathroom” advertised in the listing was just an old bathtub with no shower handle, meaning you had to use just the hose to take a shower. Furthermore, the bedroom did not have any curtains, just decorative tulle over the windows that did not even cover the whole window. As there was construction going on next door and there was a scaffolding, it was uncomfortable to sleep and get dressed in the bedroom without the windows being covered.

Finally, the listing stated: “Your bedroom is situated upstairs with the living room, the bathroom and the toilet that are only shared with me” which led me to think that she had a bedroom upstairs too. When I went to collect my keys she told me I would be staying in her room and she would be sleeping on the couch in the living room, which was not advertised. She did not stay in the house for the duration of my stay. I did not complain about these at the time because of the cancellation policy. I thought I could just get on with it.

I did contact Airbnb to say I felt uncomfortable at the property, and wanted to talk about my options. I left the property on the morning of June 20th, and did not come back until the next night. When I entered the house, the bathroom was a complete mess, and the bathtub was under construction and not usable. Even the sink was blocked with heavy furniture so I did not have access to any water. I’ve added photos from my first cancellation request; however, if needed, I can provide more photos.

This was a week in which the temperature was over 30 degrees in London. Since I work full time, not being able to take a shower or even wash my face in the bathroom sink was extremely inconvenient. If the construction started after I left on Tuesday, then she or the flatmate had more than 24 hours to let me know about the construction. If it had started on the morning of Wednesday, they had a full day (12 hours) to let me know about the construction. Yet no one informed me.

When I went to the property to pick up the keys on June 9th, the host had told me that there could be some quick work going on in the bathroom during my stay, but she told me she would give me notice. This was not ideal either, as if I had known this I would have not booked the property. This should have been told to me before the booking process.

After I left for work not having taken a shower, on Thursday, the host told me I could use her flatmate’s shower. However, the flatmate had strictly marked her own areas in the house and was not friendly at all, so I would have not been comfortable using her shower. I am sure the flatmate would not be happy with it either. More importantly, there was also work being done in that bathroom with tiles missing and dust around. Therefore, there were no clean usable shower amenities in the house. This is contrary what was advertised and I believe constitutes a Travel Issue under Airbnb’s Guest Cancellation Policy: “The listing booked is misrepresented (ex: number of bedrooms, location, lacks promised amenities).”

On Friday, June 23rd, I messaged the host, asking to shorten my stay and leave on Sunday. She immediately agreed and gave me the option to deal with the refund through Airbnb or directly with her. She gave me a calculation of how much my stay had cost with the weekly discount rather than the monthly discount, and agreed to refund me for the nights after my checkout. We then agreed that I would leave on Saturday, June 24th, making my stay 12 nights. However, I had not stayed in her house since Thursday, the 22nd, meaning that I only stayed at hers for 10 nights.

In short, from the first moment she agreed to refund me. All this is documented in our messages (not on Airbnb but if required I can provide screenshots of the conversation). If she had not agreed to refund me, I would not have left the property and would have stayed there until the end of my tenancy, July 10th. I immediately contacted Airbnb on what to do, yet I was kept being promised a call back from my case worker but I never received one. After calling Airbnb many times over the week I was advised to cancel my reservation and then ask for a refund.

I was advised to ask for a refund starting from the night I stopped staying at the property due to the bathtub construction, so I calculated my stay only for 10 nights. I cancelled my reservation and asked for a refund based on 10 nights, however the host declined my request. I imagine you can see her reply – she said that it was my responsibility to know the refund policy. I was aware of the refund policy; that’s why I wanted to confirm that she would refund me for the nights I did not stay. When she confirmed she would refund me through our messages, I cancelled. So I feel victimised now that she is saying she won’t refund me after I left the property. Like I said, if I had known, I would not have left.

Secondly, in her response she said that the construction had been finished in two days. When I went to collect my belongings on Saturday, the bathroom was still a mess; the bathtub was not finished and unusable, there were still construction equipment, and there was dirt and a mess all around the bathroom. There was no one working on the construction and since it was Sunday the other day no one would have been working on it the whole weekend. This means that the construction was going on for four days, and was probably going to go on for the next two days. Her claim in her response is simply untruthful.

Finally, in her response she said that I stayed 12 nights (even though it was 10 nights in reality), and that I should submit a refund request for the remaining nights after my stay. This is against what Airbnb advised me to do, but I just wanted to be done with this whole process and get my money. I requested another refund for 12 nights as she said. It has been more than 72 hours and she hasn’t replied. I’ve sent her another reminder message and she hasn’t replied to that either. I have been calling Airbnb every single day for he past week, and I can never reach my case manager. I don’t know what to do.