Tag Archives: terrible hosts

Airbnb Hosts from Hell and a Break in

Posted on

My boyfriend and I were travelling around Europe for a month over summer. We decided to finish our trip in Florence and booked an Airbnb for three nights. In the listing on Airbnb, the apartment appeared larger than it actually was and said it provided wifi, AC, and necessary toiletries, e.g. shampoo, conditioner, etc.

When we arrived we realised the apartment was much smaller than that shown in the pictures, the AC barely worked, the wifi constantly disconnected and was very slow, there was no hot water or bins, and the toilet didn’t flush properly. We contacted Airbnb and our host immediately. There was no reply from the host. Airbnb said they would forward my message along to the host.

We contacted Airbnb everyday about these complaints and were told they could do nothing about it unless they could get through to the host. On our third day the apartment was broken into and our money stolen. We called the police and filed a report, contacted Airbnb and called the hosts. The hosts did not respond, despite three of them being linked to our apartment on the app.

Airbnb said they would also contact the hosts and could not get through to them. We asked to be relocated as the apartment was not safe, due to the door not being able to lock anymore and a chunk of the wall being missing. Airbnb said they would pass it along to their trust and safety team and call us back. We were also told they could not relocate us and would only subsidise the fee of somewhere else by 50% if we found it ourselves.

We called a total of 13 times that day and were repeatedly told to wait for a call back. We were never called back. A member of the trust and safety team emailed us about the matter the following morning around 4:00 or 5:00 AM. However, this was too late as it was our last night and we ended up leaving at 6:00 AM to go home.

Whilst on our journey back home we were contacted by the hosts, after hearing nothing for our entire stay, and blamed us for the break in. They told us that they had the right to ask for compensation for the damages caused by the break in and that our complaints about the hot water was pretext. They stated that they needed to get a professional in to fix the wall and we should have to pay for it. They also refused our request for a refund.

We argued back and forth for a while and eventually they said they felt sorry for us and had decided it wasn’t our fault but that they shouldn’t have to blame whoever broke in? The lack of response or willing to accept any fault from the hosts and the horrible customer service from Airbnb made us feel completely abandoned. We are in the process of arguing for a full refund.

Airbnb Hosts Destroying Bali for Cheap Profits

Posted on

Charming Bali Home, Wifi RiceFields Ubud, Bali, Indonesia. Google it, or go through the Airbnb website to find it. The accommodation is so so, but apart from the stench of pigs, not too bad for the money.  What is really terrible about this listing is the fact that the “hosts”: Jacques and Anita Goudreault are not the real hosts at all, but merely brokers (“calo”) who take advantage of local people, who are often computer illiterate and don’t speak foreign languages well.  These leeches spend most of their time and efforts looking for the next hosts, latch on and suck free money for doing nothing. They claim to be Jesus and will tell you that the world is better off, thanks to them, but they have very little regard for their fellow man and certainly don’t care about the long term consequences for a rapidly choking Bali, once a paradise, but fast becoming a heavily polluted open sewer, which fails to connect to the ocean, thanks to many tons of plastic. Criticize them and you will unleash Jacques fury, a clear sign that he knows he’s in the wrong. His playboy lifestyle is heavily supported by sucking out naive and often simple, hard working Balinese. Find the accommodation yourself and deal direct with the owner(s). Jacques and Anita Goudreault “host” many listings… Find their name linked to a property, then avoid it. Or, like mentioned above: Find the property and book it direct from the owner. Both sides will be much better off! Airbnb has no control over the rotting and contributes to the new colonial mentality of some scrupulous ex-pats who couldn’t make it in their own country….. By-pass them and make a difference.

Does my mistake excuse their potheadedness?

Posted on

So I will start this off by saying…my dog somehow managed to jump thru a screen window at my host’s place while I was away for a few hours, because I don’t usually need to kennel my dog. Not only that but who the f*ck can possibly, logically presume the creativity of their pets to find a way to jump thru a window screen? However, yes he did this (no excuse), but my host and his wife were ACTUALLY THERE when it happened, and total potheads to the point that they were kind enough to NOT even bother to show me the simple courtesy of calling or spending 15 seconds of their time to send a message to let me know it happened…so I could hurry my f*cking ass back there to attend to the problem I created. So I arrived at ~3 PM that day to find my dog wandering their neighborhood, my hosts not even there, but away from their property. And upon returning later they didn’t even address the fact that they didn’t let me know it happened but were so fucking lazy with following up on it later in their Airbnb claim was to go on Amazon.com and look up window screens (since Amazon.com has the most diverse solution/market for window screens) and pick the most advanced solution available for their flimsy, aluminum window screen my dog ruined – which was probably 3 times more than it was worth – and request to charge that premium. And on top of that tacked on a pillow that had a stain – which I didn’t even use because I brought my own orthopedic pillow – but the claim they made had me reimbursing them for a set of pillows rather than one. All of this after their untrained farm dog attacked my dog at one point during my stay to the point that they had to pull their dog off of him… Thanks Airbnb…I really appreciate the ‘services’ you provide…