Tag Archives: airbnb long stay nightmare

Nightmare Experience in Portugal Involving Creepy Host

Posted on

I’m going to preface this by saying I have stayed in countless Airbnbs in three different continents and have had nothing but positive experiences until I stayed at this place. My roommate and I faced one absurdity after another. Conveniently my review (and all other negative reviews) have been removed by Airbnb.

The apartment itself was borderline uninhabitable. To be frank, it seemed to be a storage locker that the host was trying to pass off as an apartment. There was no ventilation and just two windows the size of a laptop. Both had broken glass with a makeshift net covering them, allowing roaches to freely roam inside the apartment; the place was infested with them. In addition to the ventilation problem, the shower pressure was so low it only had a drizzle of water pressure that would not allow for anyone’s definition of a proper shower.

The highlight of this stay was our second night when a leak under the bathroom sink caused the entire apartment to flood. Instead of a proper response to the situation, like securing a pump, the host and his mother came over with brooms and mops, handed them to us, which resulted in us (the guests) sweeping water out of the apartment for several hours in the middle of the night. We then also helped sweep water out of his apartment next door.

Following this, the house was never properly cleaned which resulted in a sickening odor throughout the house for the remainder of our stay (my flatmate and I felt physically ill throughout our entire stay). She kept getting migraines following this and I was congested and sick. After this we had to ask for a change of sheets. What we were provided with was the consistency of sandpaper and was meant to last us for an entire month.

To add more discomfort to the situation, the host managed to find me and repeatedly liked me on different dating apps where I found some of his prompts about impregnating people truly disturbing. Knowing that this person not only shared a wall with us, but also had keys to our apartment made me incredibly uncomfortable and had us looking for new places while there. He would almost daily ask to enter the apartment for “supplies” or to “take care” of the multitude of issues the apartment had to deal with. We understand that hosts may need access from time to time but the frequency made it feel gratuitous and like we had no privacy.

Once I left my review, the host had the gall to ask for $2,000 of “cleaning” fees and had taken photos of our belongings without our consent. I repeatedly reported this to Airbnb. They even had the nerve to remove my review of the host but I am now stuck with a derogatory review on my account. To say that Airbnb only protects the interests of the hosts would be a gross understatement. I am so disgusted by their handling of this situation.

Hawaii Vacation Turned Nightmare with Bed Bugs

Posted on

Let me start off my saying I am not usually a complainer. I like to think of myself as someone who goes with the flow. However, a week into my three-month long stay at an Airbnb in Honolulu, I found myself turning into someone who wants to raise hell.

I woke up with lots of tiny red, itchy dots on my arms. I thought maybe I had gotten bitten during my run in the park the previous day. I waited a day or two but they only got worse. Around this time I also started noticing tiny black specks on my sheets and pillows. I did some investigating and found out that these could be bed bug fecal stains (gross, right).

I contacted my host who told me to go to the doctor and see what they said about my bites. I went to the urgent care down the street to pay $40 to have some idiot look at my arms for five seconds and told me it was a rash. I knew it wasn’t a rash at this point because I have sensitive skin and get rashes quite frequently. This is when I decided to try and contact Airbnb, and subsequently put myself through customer service hell.

I contacted Airbnb about this bedbug problem on March 2. It is currently March 11 and I am sitting in a hotel, still with no answer about this problem. The first person assigned to my case was the most unresponsive customer service agent I have ever experienced. He would take hours, sometimes even days to respond, with only vague responses.

I called a few days later requesting a new case agent and was told that someone was already working on my case. I called almost 3-4 times a day for the next few days until someone said they could take over my case. They told me that he was supposed to have transferred my case to a new agent after his shift was over, but instead left it to be handled by no one.

It’s now been a week of me getting bitten every single night. My physical and mental health are both plummeting. I have bites on my arms, hands, back, and even my face. On March 10, I finally found two bed bugs. Up until now I was getting bitten and saw stains but couldn’t see the actual bugs. An exterminator, who I had to call, came later that night and was able to confirm that it was bed bugs.

Mind you, this is a long term rental from Feb. 15 – May 15. My friend and I are currently without somewhere to stay for about another two months. Airbnb has constantly changed what they said they will reimburse and has refused to tell us if they will put us somewhere new. They won’t even tell us how much of a refund we will be getting.

I honestly don’t even want to stay at another Airbnb because of how they have treated us but I guess that would be better than living out of our car. I can never get in touch with the person actually working my case and whenever I call they say that they’ll tell the case manager to call me back. Have they ever actually called me back? You guessed it, nope. This has been ongoing for almost two weeks at this point with no end in sight. Airbnb hell indeed.

Absolute Nightmare Long-Term Guest

Posted on
blankblankblank

I have been hosting two houses on Airbnb for over three years and until now I had never had any issues. I fear that this one is far from over.

A few months ago I got a request for a long term stay from a lady who claimed to be friends with my gardener, Harris (name changed). The money was good, and it meant that I didn’t have to worry about dealing with new arrivals for a while. I accepted the booking.

This ended up being one of the biggest mistakes of my life, which soon became evident when I received a call at 5:00 AM on the day of check-in. She was claiming that she was unable to access the property because the keys didn’t work. I drove over 15 minutes later to find her removing a fly-screen and attempting to climb through the window (note this lady is about 75 years old). I tested the keys; they were working fine and she was able to enter the property. I explained where the second and third sets of backup keys were hidden just incase she had any more issues, then spent the rest of the morning fixing the fly screen.

I didn’t hear from her for another two weeks, but then I got a call from her claiming that she had lost her keys and couldn’t access the property. I asked her about the two backup keys; she told me that they had been lost. I drove over to the property again with my set up keys to let her in. By the time I got there, she had found her keyring and I was shocked to find that she had connected the one main set and two backup sets of keys to the same keychain. I tried to explain to her that this defeated the purpose of having backup keys, but she just kept trying to assure me that she wouldn’t lose them again.

Now the story gets really interesting. I got a call from the police on a Friday afternoon looking for my guest. I find out that she has a history of mental illness and had been off her meds. Now her family who are 1000 km away have been trying to get her committed to a mental hospital (due to COVID they can’t leave the state). They had found out where she was when her accountant notified them that she was attempting to purchase a $1.4 million property.

The police came over and we headed to the Airbnb where she was nowhere to be seen. The police gave me their details and I told them that I would let them know if I heard anything. I sent her a message, let her know what happened, and advised her to contact the police and her family as they are worried about her. Eventually I got a message back and found out that she was shacked up in a caravan with my gardener Harris and they been avoiding the police for the past few days.

Eventually she got in contact with her family and they convinced her to check herself into the mental hospital where she stayed for the next six weeks. In the meantime, I got a call from her accountant and he asked me to retrieve some papers from the Airbnb. I went in there and found the most disgusting mess I have ever seen: cigarettes, incense, hundreds of sea shells, and rotting fruit. I even found that she had set fire to the fake LED candles.

The strangest thing was all of these pieces of paper everywhere with bizarre diagrams and notes (I have attached one of them). She had also started hoarding objects that she found on the side of the road. I got the papers and mailed them to her accountant, who also offered to extend the booking on the Airbnb and pay for the cleaning costs while she was in hospital. I could go on for a while about all the strange things that happened while she was in hospital but it would take too long. I will skip to when she got out, which was about four months ago.

She was released from the hospital, put on medication, and everything was fine for the first two months. The house was kept tidy; she wasn’t hoarding and appeared to be mentally stable. Then I noticed that my gardener Harris had moved in the house. Pretty soon her behavior started to go downhill again. The house started to get messy again, so much so that my cleaner refused to clean the house on a weekly basis, due to the smell of the incense and cigarettes, and that she was randomly hanging up her underpants all over the house.

I went over to talk to her and Harris about their behavior. The house was a mess and there was a whiteboard with the title “Night at the Opera” with what I believe to be sex acts listed below (I have attached a photo). Although I was concerned, they seemed receptive to keeping the place tidy and I attempted to find a cleaner that would deal with them.

The next week I found a cleaning company that was willing to clean the house and I tried to organize a time for them to clean with the guest. She claimed that she didn’t need a cleaner and was happy to do all the cleaning herself. I insisted that she let the cleaners come in but she said no and I left it at that. About four days later, she called me complaining that the cleaners hadn’t come. I reminded her about the previous conversation and then asked her when an appropriate time would be for them to come. After a back and forth, she said that she and Harris were on their honeymoon and did not wish to be disturbed. Again feeling very confused, I left it at that.

A few days later she changed her mind again and wanted a cleaner. I told her that I would get the cleaner but she had to clear up all of her clutter and get rid of the things she has picked up off the side of the road and is hoarding in the house and garage so that the cleaner can actually do their job. After I said this, she completely lost it and started yelling at me saying how dare I criticize her way of living.

After this I had enough and decided that she had to go. The next day, however, their neighbor (who is a full-time tenant of mine) called me up and wanted to have a talk about Harris’ strange behavior. She told me he had been cutting their trees and creeping around their lawn when he thought that they were not home. They said that he had also been parking his trailer in the other neighbor’s garage when he wasn’t at home (it’s a holiday house).

I sent Harris a text and asked him if he had been cutting the neighbors’ trees or going on to their property, and he denied everything. Now I had really had enough. I got in contact with Airbnb support, explained the situation, and asked if I could cancel her future booking that started on Feb. 28. After I listed a few of the things she had done they agreed to cancel the booking after I talked to her. I arranged to have a chat with her in a few days time.

When I got to the house, Harris was sitting on a couch that they found on the side of the road and put in the front yard. I said hello then knocked on the front door. The guest called out and she said that she was too sick to talk to me and asked me to go away. As I was angrily walking towards my car I notice Harris’ trailer parked in the neighbor’s garage. I asked him if the the neighbor was okay with him parking there. He told me that it was none of my concern, which kicked off a huge yelling match between the two us which eventually ended in me telling him that he had to leave.

The next day I logged into Airbnb to cancel the booking, but when I went to cancel it I got a message telling me that I would lose my Superhost status, no one will be able to rebook the dates that they were meant to stay there (it was a five-month booking), and other penalties. So I contacted Airbnb and asked them to wave the penalties, citing the previous support case that I opened. I got a different case manager who asked me to provide evidence, so I provided some texts and some photos. He sat on this for a couple of days and asked me to go over and takes some more photos.

By this time I was very frustrated, especially after I was previously told that it would be okay to cancel the booking. I told him that I was not willing to creep around the house taking photos while there were guests inside, as it is a really bad look for a landlord to be doing this. So I say to hell with the penalties and cancel the booking. I decided to get the penalties removed retroactively.

I then informed the guest she would need to be out of the property by Feb. 28. The next day the guest sent me a text telling me that I do not have the right to make her move and she intended to take me to court. I responded telling her that it has already happened, then sat there hoping that this whole ordeal was finally over. Two days later it was Australia Day, and I noticed that Harris has installed a flag pole in the front yard… seriously, a f—ing flagpole.

I’m sure that this ordeal is nowhere near over but I found writing all this out quite therapeutic and I needed to vent.

Want to Illegally Occupy an Apartment? Look no Further!

Posted on

I was full of joy and hopes for the future when I booked Nadia’s apartment that she offers as “Schöne und helle Wohnung – Ideal gelegen“. I was moving to Germany for a new amazing job and made a one-month booking to have a place at the start of my contract. We had chats over the telephone and WhatsApp weeks before my trip. We talked about my new job, about holidays destinations, and about the carnivals. I was even thinking I might have found my first friend in town. How lucky!

On the first night at her place she told me I had to keep secret that I came using Airbnb. I found it fishy. During the following ten days I realised, and Nadia confirmed, that she doesn’t own the apartment and that she isn’t allowed to list it on Airbnb. Subletting and having hosts is forbidden in her tenancy agreement with the landlord. I guess Nadia loves risk, and also loves to put others at risk. To make things even more exciting, her landlord is a real estate agency that owns the whole block and whose office is in the same building. Their front door, a full see-through glass door, is located at the ground level and you have to literally walk just centimeters away from it when you go to take out the trash.

I wonder if Nadia really thinks there is a chance they won’t discover there is someone unknown living for a month there. Even though it was inevitable that I be caught by the landlord, the need to make my situation legal in Germany speeded up that process. The lovely German bureaucracy requires paperwork from hosts that have guests. Failure to complete the registration costs up to 1000€ for the party that doesn’t cooperate with the administration, whether you’re a host or guest. The landlord finally discovered the truth.

I contacted Airbnb multiple times during my registration nightmare, which lasted for twelve long days. I got answers ranging from “we only put hosts and guests in touch, and that’s it” to “here is the invoice, try to register with it.” I asked to be relocated to another place where it was legal. They said if Nadia wanted to cancel, then I could take the money and get something else. But it didn’t seem to be a problem for them that she had a listing she wasn’t allowed to have. And of course Nadia didn’t want to cancel just like that! The only moment when she wanted to cancel it and refund me, was the morning when she realised I could register providing the invoice.

The chance of a confrontation with Nadia increased exponentially. By contrast, the relationship with her landlord and neighbor was smooth and cordial. She accused me of not following the rules of the house because she says I told her landlord. In fact, it was the German bureaucracy who did, but I am happy I could have the chance to meet the real estate employee, a really nice woman. The landlord didn’t ask me to leave the apartment, but the trust had been broken with Nadia.

The impossibility to get my correspondence and the discovery that multiple keys were spread among her friends was the last thing I needed to realise Airbnb should have done something about it. A case was open and I requested to be relocated once more. All that Airbnb offered was to refund half the cost of the rest of the days not consumed. I actually only needed relocation for six nights. I had already figured a solution for later. They said with that money I could get something in Airbnb for six nights for sure. Well, this wasn’t true. The cheapest price for a night was 50% higher than my booking price. With my booking cancelled at 8:00 PM, just a morning to pack and go, and no reasonable price options at Airbnb I ended up in a hotel. It was cheaper, easier and provided warranty.