Tag Archives: airbnb weird host

Odd Pet Situation: Host Expects Guests to Take Care of Dogs?

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I will start off by saying that this Airbnb listing did not mention that pets were in the apartment, so I was both shocked and pleasantly surprised (I like animals) when I saw two small dogs outside on the patio. They were puppies. I don’t mind dogs, and I just thought that they belonged to the owner. It turns out the owner was a live out owner, and no one owned the dogs. There was one guy who (I think) was supposed to look after the flat and the dogs, and serve as the attendant for the Airbnb, but he was gone (sometimes all day and most of the night).

I don’t know if this guy had a job, but while these dogs were getting food and water, they weren’t getting walked, and would constantly cry for attention. The neighbors would knock on the door, and leave notes telling us that the dogs were crying. There were three adults in the apartment who gone for most of the day. These poor dogs were not getting the best care. The other tenant in the apartment and I offered to walk them but they had no leashes.

Cut to later in the week two people came into the flat to adopt one of the dogs. Okay, so the owner breeds dogs, and then dumps them in her Airbnb until they can be adopted? Thats a pretty shitty thing to do to the dogs.

There were some other odd things about the place as well. The place looked like it was being lived in by someone else entirely. The kitchen had random family photos, none of which included the photo of the host. There were boxes full of stuff, and luggage in the closets. The bathrooms were stocked with a whole bunch of half used toiletries. It felt like a dumping ground, which someone never really moved out off.

On top of that, the place was on the bottom of a massive building, which was under construction. I’m sure this isn’t the worst experience, but it was odd, and misleading from the photos and description. There was no transparency, and neither the random guy or the host ever explained what was up with the dog situation.

Airbnb Host Refuses to Post Exterior Photos

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Must just be me but we get into the strangest situations. We are planning to visit grandchildren in California this September. We had been looking for an Airbnb place to stay. The one in which we usually stay was booked long term until January 2022. We thought we found one; it was a mini farm with small animals, and thought it would be fun for the kids. With the pictures online, the inside looked clean and nice and the reviews were good.

Since we spend so much time outdoors, we wondered why there were no outside photos. Most places show the deck, porch, yard, etc. We emailed her and asked if we could see the outside.

She replied:

We appreciate your interest in the [house]. Airbnb does not allow pictures to be sent before booking. I assume to prevent people from booking outside of Airbnb? Don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions that will help you determine if you would like to book a stay with us.

We could understand that, so we replied:

How kind of you for responding so quickly. We were thinking maybe you had photos of the outside that you could post on your listing. Have a great day.

She replied:

The [house] is a guest house on our property, so the outside area guests have access to is limited to the immediate surrounding area. We don’t have pictures of the outside for our own privacy, and security of our own home. If you could please explain why such interest in the outside and deck? We may be better able to answer your question or advise if we have what you’re looking for or not. Stay well!

We decided at $200 a day this was not the place for us when she would not even let us see the outside until we got there. Meanwhile we noticed they have their photos on the listing and even their child’s photo — so much for their privacy.

Host Left a Bad Review Because Kitchen… Smelled like Cooked Food

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Let me start by saying I have OCD and am generally kinda fussy about other people’s space, so I clean pretty much everything before I leave wherever I’m a guest, whether it’s a hotel room or a friend’s house or an Airbnb. I’m a total rule follower (I admit it) and my goal for wherever I stay is to essentially cause as little bother as possible. So all of my Airbnb reviews have been stellar, with one exception.

I stayed at a cabin in a fairly rural area with my wife for a long weekend. The day we checked out, I got up and made breakfast, then cleaned up, packed, and left. The trip was completely uneventful, and I left a positive review. The host left me a lengthy negative review because she went into the cabin right after we checked out and found a problem: she smelled cooked food in the kitchen area.

It was a tiny, one-room place where the windows didn’t open, and even if they had, it was January. Also, there was no vent system on the stove. Everything was put back where it belonged, we followed all the rules, the dishes were clean and put away, the pots and pans and utensils were all clean and put away, I took the trash and recycling out, and even cleaned the stove, countertops, etc. But none of that bested the part where it still faintly smelled like scrambled eggs and bacon (it wasn’t even smelly or unusual food, or something that permeated even the entire cabin — just the kitchen area, by her own admission).

The review went on and on about how offensive it was that I had left the air dirty, I guess? I actually contacted Airbnb, just because this was my first negative review and I was fairly baffled. The customer service rep was audibly suppressing laughter and finally said (this is not a direct quote): “You didn’t do anything wrong, but also we can’t take the review down because there’s nothing false in it.”

I don’t disagree with this — nobody broke any rules, it’s just petty, and hopefully that CSR at least came away from it with a funny story. I’m probably never going to use Airbnb again for other reasons — just because nothing bad has happened to me doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore what happens to other people — but if I did, I hope future hosts look at my reviews and get a good giggle out of the only negative being “the air smelled kinda like food in the kitchen, an hour or so after somebody cooked.”

Anyway, I just wanted to share a story where no one’s life got ruined and nobody got scammed out of a ton of money. Turns out you can do everything technically correct and your host can still get salty because you didn’t clean the air.

A side note: my parents gave me a fairly androgynous name that a lot of English-speaking people assume is male, especially online, so it’s possible she didn’t realize she was renting to a lesbian couple until we showed up. But I don’t want to assume it was ‘homophobe looks for things to be mean about’; that’s just the only thing we could think of that might’ve made her weird towards us specifically, as she had been completely normal and friendly until she saw us in person.

Cheap Airbnb Host Charges Extra for Everything

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I was looking to stay at a place for ten weeks and found a good deal. The minute I expressed interest the host basically harassed me until I signed and kept saying that “if I didn’t agree he had others lined up.” He actually cancelled on me until I went back and said yes (this was within 24 hours).

Anyways, his post had pictures of a pool table and a large couch with projectors. He also told me that he and his girlfriend traveled quite a bit and that I would have the whole townhome to myself. When I arrived, however, I found out that I basically got one bedroom and was told that downstairs was off limits. He then said that I could have one shelf in the fridge. I was in a room with no central air and the bathroom was absolutely disgusting. The sink took a while to drain but I was fine with that.

At first it was okay and I never used the kitchen. However, one time he and his girlfriend left and I began to spread out more into the upstairs living room areas. One day, I left for my rotation day quite early and was planning on cleaning up that evening. My host got back a little after I left and sent me image after image saying how disgusting it was to come back to a dirty house. He then kept sending me images and pictures saying that I was irresponsible and that I needed to clean up. He kept harassing me until I paid him $50 apologizing after which he basically didn’t say anything. The irony was he and his girlfriend moved a bunch of their stuff back and piled it all over the kitchen.

I was pretty much just left in my room all the time because it was too awkward to go use the house. He disabled the heat and the cable while he was gone so there was a span of five days where I was living in a 50-degree house. After I checked out, he messaged me saying that one of his towels was missing and that the drain was clogged. After three weeks, he sent a message requesting $45 to repair the drain. When I mentioned the $50 I had already paid him previously as an extra/coverage for such fees, he said that that didn’t count and that I paid him without him asking — this time, he was requesting the $45.

It was awful. I was confined to a room for ten weeks and basically never really got to use the house. He got angry when I tried to clean up the kitchen with cleaning supplies I bought (he didn’t leave any cleaning supplies). He said that he only preferred to clean with his own supplies but he kept them hidden away and would charge $30 every time something needed to be extensively cleaned, which he found to be quite often. Furthermore, there were amenities on his listing (pool table, a projector lounge, large TV) that were inaccessible to me. Basically, he harassed me to sign up and then I stayed in one room. Horrible.

A Laundry Room is not a “Private Room”

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Due to being desperate to find affordable housing in LA during the summer, I settled for the next best thing: Airbnb. At the time it seemed like a huge step up from where I had previously stayed (a six-person dorm in what seemed like a large renovated tool shed with no windows and sketchy guests). Now it’s just getting ridiculous.

Again, I had decided to stay in this Airbnb because I was literally desperate for some peace of mind, and I thought, “Hey, considering how many people potentially live in this Airbnb, they’re not going to do laundry every day“… except they basically are.

It seems that the hosts/property managers clean for other houses (what I am assuming other Airbnbs that they own), so they basically use this laundry room pretty consistently. There are usually two days at most in the week where they aren’t? If they aren’t using the room, then other guests usually need to wash their laundry. I rarely have privacy.

There seem to be a slew of other questionable things the “hosts” do. I have noticed the roommate of the host has spammed positive reviews on every listing they’ve put on Airbnb. I put “hosts” in quotation marks because the whole thing is confusing in of itself. I’ve never met the actual hosts in person; I’ve only met the property manager, who has access to the hosts’ account.

Another guest and I often wondered if said property manager and host are the same person but under a different name. Not to mention how the property manager thought I voted for Trump for some reason when I first got there. It became like a hyperfixation for them. They would always mention it as like a “gotcha” moment, but I never did. It always just came off as confusing at first but then got annoying when I was just trying to get on with my day.

They once used my contact information to even text me a picture of Trump. They also did the text thing to a former guest I roomed with at around the same time we stayed, and when said guest replied with ‘lol’, the property manager asked him who he voted for. I feel like there are a lot of other things that I have forgotten to mention, but it would take a while to remember what other stuff I tolerated.

I am not entirely sure what I can do at this point to be honest. If there is anything you can take from this just please don’t support these hosts’ listings. They’re weird, and kinda sketchy. I am also genuinely tired of Airbnb as a platform. I have never had a good experience with Airbnb, and considering how it has proven to be one of the major factors for how messed up the housing situation has become in the US, I wish it would get trashed as a whole.

San Juan del Sur, Nicaraguan Hell Vacation

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I stumbled down the hot street looking for rooms when suddenly a gate opened on to a large property and I peeped in. I pushed past the garden fixture, a young teenage fella hired for general property duties, towards a frazzled woman of about 60, wiping sweat off her forehead and giving the fixture a look for letting me in.

“What can I do for you?’ She was a Brit.

‘I’m looking for a room,’ I said, dropping my suitcase. She looked me up and down, asked me a few pointed questions, then walked me back to a room in a house two houses back from the first, each with a pool.

Thus was the beginning of the worst holiday I’ve ever had. My first Airbnb and my last. I surveyed the room: art deco, clean. We agreed on $45/night, but I was disappointed to learn that I would be sharing the house with her disgruntled husband, an inveterate television watcher, late night snacker, ball scratcher.

Any question I asked him he directed back to his wife. I asked for a key to my room, but there was none. She said, ‘Well, just hide the things that are important to you.’

Easier said than done when you have a suspect roommate, whom I was soon to meet. I dove into my bathing suit and went out to the pool, where I was introduced to a disheveled woman in her seventies from Chicago with a humped back, and a distended stomach the likes of which I had never seen. But for her long, tangled gray hair, you might have thought she was pregnant due to the protrusion of her stomach, accentuated by stick-like legs that reached, crablike, to suck and the ground towards her. She ground her teeth and smoked beside the pool.

I bumped into her in the hall the next morning and my good morning wasn’t exuberant enough because from that moment on she ignored me. I didn’t exist. It was weird. When I sat outside, she’d pull her chair around to make sure her back was to me. In the kitchen, she turned her back, when she walked out the door, she walked right by me. When her son visited with friends, she did the same. She was unbelievably childish and it became a real pain in the arse for everybody.

The house was super noisy; you heard everything and you had little privacy. Every time a door shut, it slammed and rattled through the house. Every door also squeaked. I asked my host why they didn’t oil the hinges and she said she wanted it that way so she knew what was going on. I wound up slamming my door harder, just to ease her mind.

‘Oh I feel like I’m in between the two of you, now I feel awful. I don’t want to be in this position,’ said the host one morning. ‘I just feel awful.’ She then patted my arm and said ‘be the bigger person.’

Later, she and I were sitting at the kitchen table having coffee (although it was a bed and breakfast I had yet to get any breakfast) discussing alternative medicines. She spoke of her chronically upset stomach (viciously throwing up for hours my first night there), her constipation, along with her dazzling display of varicose veins.

‘Urology,’ she said. A blank look formed in my eyes. ‘You know what that is don’t you?’

‘Uh, yeah?’

She explained urology. ‘It’s when you drink your own urine.’

‘Oh,’ I said. Okay, look normal now, I thought, thinking back to the orange juice in the fridge.

‘It’s very good for your health because you’re drinking your own bodily fluids.There’s nothing wrong with it.’

Did I say there was? Okay, time for a swim.

She couldn’t take the situation with the other guest anymore and feeling forced to choose, stopped talking to me; the guest was a snowbird, after all. There was silence from the host as she dusted while I made coffee. No “How’s your room? Do you need a towel? Are you having a good time?”

It was awkward and I rued having paid her for the week because there was no way I was getting a refund. Mostly, I resented them when they sat around smoking dope and didn’t even offer me a toke.

The host was obsessed with money, or lack thereof. Her husband opened up to me about how much money they owed. I was somewhat relieved when she stopped talking to me because she pissed and moaned about money constantly: the downturn in tourism, their loans, her daughter’s expensive school in France, the houses. She was so self-absorbed.

The people who stayed at the fourth house on the property were unhappy. They were up on a bluff and they had no air conditioning for the perpetual burning sun, and no screens for the wind that brought dust, delivering massive gobs of brown sand to every surface inside. The floors were sandy.

The guest had to go to the doctor because of a bronchial infection. She was coughing up great gobs of yellow… let’s not get too descriptive. She couldn’t get any rest, either, because there were chickens right under her window that woke her up every morning at five. Not to mention the dogs that barked next door. When she asked the host about getting the house cleaned, she said:

‘Yeah, if you want to share the expense of that.’

‘How much would that be?’

‘Eight dollars.’

Yes, in spite of her avowed devotion to spirituality, she was cheap. I couldn’t wait to leave. It’s hard staying in a place as a guest where the hostess is pretending you’re just not there.

Amsperience Treeland Wormerveer Listing in Amsterdam

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The words ‘sweet’ and ‘cosy’ and ‘paradise’ should be banned from Airbnb. It is possible to find cheap accommodation on Airbnb which is actually of a good standard, not too spartan and actually very pleasant to stay in.

The correct choice of budget accommodation on Airbnb is not helped by the fact that the company sifts out the worst reviews and a reading of the reviews of a property like this actually looks fairly positive. This landlord has also re-listed his property many times to eliminate bad reviews.

The couple running this venue are in their 20s and have had the immense good fortune to have been handed what was a very nice house with a lot of character with a big garden. Sadly the way in which they run the venue is very disappointing and disconcerting to experience.

I stayed with them at their old venue in 2016, which was rustic but not unpleasant, and at this venue in 2017. You will enter the premises via a side gate, next to which the domestic bins are, plus a big pile of domestic rubbish under a plastic cover. The garden is visibly neglected, quite over-grown, which creates a secluded but rather depressing impression.

The house is wooden, with a very characteristic hallway, but which has seen a lot of human traffic: the floor and doors are scuffed and grubby, there are cobwebs, blown light bulbs, and a wooden staircase which also needs cleaning. There is an odd smell probably due to the result of lack of proper cleaning. The entire downstairs is private to the operator.

A glimpse through the dirty windows reveals a catastrophic hoarder kitchen and a very untidy living space on the ground floor. The downstairs common bathroom and toilet is actually quite good.

The owner says that he does not allow access to the kitchen because it ‘f*cks up my energy.’ The kitchen is not even usable for any conventional purpose and would require many days of cleaning to restore.

There are two upstairs bedrooms. They are both a good size. The bigger one is an en suite with a nice shower, but the shower has been out of action for a few months because of a leak. The sliding door to this room could be locked with a padlock, but there is no padlock. The other room has no door but a curtain. The beds, although pallet beds, are comfortable. There is also a rustic wooden building in the garden which is a cluttered, dirty, untidy workshop, with filthy windows which is sometimes available for rent.

I was asked my views on the property by the owner and I told him that he could probably double his income by providing a mini-bar fridge, fridge space for the guests, basic tea and coffee making facilities, real beds, an inclusive simple breakfast (and not the vegan breakfast he has sometimes insisted on) and by cleaning the windows. The venue does have a good washing machine and dryer which I suggested that the owner charge guests for using.

The central heating is on constantly for some unknown reason, so it is also possible to dry clothes on the radiator in the bedroom which you can turn on and off. I asked the owner about pegs for drying on the washing line but he could not be bothered to look for them.

There is wifi, but it goes off all the time when the owner’s phone goes out of range of the router. He will not change this so that guests can go online with greater convenience and is often too under the influence of drugs to connect it when asked, particularly in the evenings. I constantly had to ask him to reconnect it and towards the end of my five-day stay he could not be bothered to do it. He told me to get KPN for internet access which cost me 15 Euros and did not work at all well.

He has ideas of starting a second or third operation, when the one he has got is operating at such a poor level. He even thought that I would be interested in running an Airbnb operation with him in the future. In 2017, I was almost offered the option of running the current Airbnb operation so that the owner and his girlfriend could go on holiday, with no mention of any kind of payment or profit-share for this work.

The owner/operator is a young man approaching 30, whom I do have previous experience with. He is not at all unpleasant or dishonest but sadly he is addicted to processing and smoking dab cannabis every day. This is the principal reason why the property is run at such a low level. The Airbnb operation exists like this so that he can take drugs every day and hang around in the house.

Our previous acquaintance going back to 2016 and 2017 probably explains why he did not bother to vacuum my room before I arrived. His girlfriend was away, so he would hang out in my room, passing out on the spare bed a few times and even wanted to eat a meal of particularly smelly fried food in my room, but was prevented from doing so, because I was going out. On two other occasions he actually did this and then started asking about the food that I had. The operator consumes a lot of fried food, often late in the evening and because he does not air the downstairs area, the smell travels up the stairs.

You might actually enjoy having the owner’s two dogs running in and out of your room and trying to jump on you or on your bed. As I mentioned, the owner isn’t a bad person at all, but rather overly sociable and seems really to have no interests except drugs. He will talk a lot about conspiracy theories and his wish to start a company and change the world. It becomes grating after a short time or if you want to go to bed. I had to wake him up and eject him from the room when I wanted to sleep.

The owner is also under the impression that he is ‘helping people’ by offering such a low-rent property. You also cannot obtain a key for the house, the owner relying on keeping a key under a flower pot in the garden. This deficient security was quite a worry and travel insurance would definitely not be valid in the event of theft.

The motivation in running this operation is in fact very casual and shows a commitment to making the minimum of effort. Alternatively the operator can be quite fussy about an open bedroom window because of a mosquito problem, which I did not experience at all. He complained about this twice after he woke up from passing out on the spare bed in my room. He was also very intolerant of my opening the skylights at the top of the stairs slightly.

One of the things which you must not do is to become too social with the owner. A trip into Amsterdam means that you will suddenly be paying for his travel, food, drugs, etc. I was repaid because I kept reminding him, but had to avoid this kind of venture after that. I am writing this because I don’t see this operation lasting very long because of the ongoing level of deterioration to the property.

The painted exterior of the house is starting to deteriorate visibly in places. The operator told me back in 2017 that no exterior work needs to be done for ten years. I don’t want to be one of the succession of strangers or somebody claiming to be a friend, who said all was well with this venue, when there are severe systemic problems and standards which are non-existent.

I did tell the operator this when I was asked and my further critique here is given here in the hope that things really improve, because as a friend that is what I would like to see most. I also want to prevent strangers from having their vacation totally spoiled. This Airbnb rental is not at all suitable for children or for people with mobility or allergy issues.

Airbnb most definitely sanitises the reviews for this property so that it can stay in business, generating a sustained income for the company. I raised my concerns with Airbnb back in 2017, but they seem to have no interest in basic standards, ordinary hygiene, organisation and the constant use of drugs in the house. They are not at all concerned that cheap accommodation should be of a good standard, pleasant to arrive at and stay in.

My intention in writing this review is so that the operator is provided with a very necessary wake-up call and gains the long-overdue insight to massively improve the venue, which is entirely in his own interest to do so. It is not my business to tell an adult how to live but there is so much wrong with this operation and his alternative way of living would not be acceptable to most people.

My reading of quite a number of the original reviews more than illustrated the level of dissatisfaction and frustration felt by a lot of people who have stayed at his house. If you simply want to pass out every night when you get back from Amsterdam then this venue might suit you perfectly.

Stay Away From Weird Hosts in Bardstown

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We checked into an Airbnb apartment in Bardstown, KY. Two hours after we checked into the apartment, there was an issue with the key not working to unlock the door. The key would not turn in the lock and everything was so old, we didn’t want to mess with it for fear of breaking off the key in the lock.

It took more than 20 minutes to receive a response and when the host finally arrived and demonstrated the “trick” to turning the key in the lock I suggested she might want to include the trick in the instructions, at which time she told me I was being ugly. It was just a suggestion.

She offered a full refund, which we decided to do, then she refused to issue a refund through Airbnb. Before we returned the key to her, she asked if we had a dog in the apartment. What? No. But I do have pictures of our dog on my Facebook page. Maybe she was creeping me?

When we were finally settled in our nice clean modern room at the Hampton Inn, she called me on my cell phone and when I answered, she hung up. I called her back. No answer, of course. I suggest you stay clear of this location, unless you don’t mind being called ugly and being stalked.

Not quite what I expected from Airbnb

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How to begin? My wife and I had never stayed at an Airbnb but needed a place in Anchorage, AK. This place was reasonable priced so we booked it.

Upon arrival, we were instructed to remove our shoes outside. Upon entering, we noticed a stairway down immediately adjacent to the front door… hazardous in my opinion, but we adapted. There was a faint animal smell to the whole place, but we have dogs; that was okay.

The room was one of two sharing a bathroom with nostalgic pictures of the host’s family. The mattress had one of those plastic protectors so I felt like an infant in a crib: very crinkly whenever I shifted in the bed. The oddest thing, among many, was that we were told that a certain cabinet held dishes for our use but we were not to use the floral dishes in the microwave. Why are they there? Why the extra rules? Just remove them.

We discovered that to go to Anchorage proper required a $20 Uber. We quickly learned how to use the bus which was its own adventure. My expectation was that we would be in a slightly or mostly separated part of the house and rarely see our hosts. Such was not the case. We got up early one morning and our host was at the kitchen table where breakfast was available. She greeted us nicely but it was just a little off putting. If you like going to your Aunt Mable’s and having her follow your every move you will love it.

We had spent two nights and got a message asking if we would like the sheets changed. The host entered our room and moved our belongings while we were out. No smoking, but the host smoked on front porch adjacent to our window. The smell of cat was pervasive. What can I say? Not wanting to be a jerk, I posted the briefest review possible and will ask more questions the next time we book an Airbnb. Not hell, but not the best.

Horny Hoarder Host Didn’t Make me Feel Safe

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I arrived to the home in the rural south around 5:00 PM as planned. The host had messaged me letting me know that the door would be open, which seemed fine to me because the location was very remote. When I arrived, I saw three other welcome letters besides mine on the table, which was comforting because it was a single male host who stays on the property and I didn’t want to be the only person there.

Well, needless to say, those other letters were for people who were checking in way after I’d left. Within minutes of my arrival, the host told me about his marriage, about the girl he was dating and how that might not work out, and asked me if I wanted to go with him to dinner. I know a lot of hosts offer dinner but in combination with the talk of his relationship status and the fact that I was there alone and the remote location, I got nervous. I told him I was tired and just needed to relax to which he suggested I get in the hot tub. Um… no, and this was before I looked around.

All of the surfaces in the house were covered with stuff: dishes, trinkets, what have you. All of the cabinets were full of opened and unopened food. There was a piece of a condom wrapper on my bedside table and in the bathroom there was douche. Who would borrow that as a traveler? I decided to crash and just sleep this away. Of course, the bedroom door didn’t lock. I stood there in the dark in my room and seriously contemplated crawling out the window and never looking back.