I had a rough Saturday night --- I had a late flight cancellation and lost my phone in an uber. I booked a place in Dupont Circle in DC at around 10 pm. I apologized for the last minute booking and explained I had travel problems AND had lost my phone that night. I wrote down the check in instructions from my laptop and went to the address.
When I arrived at the house there was no keypad as the host had described. Instead, there was a locked gate requiring a key- not a code. There were no instructions about a key or locked gate. Since I had no phone, I could only get ahold of the host when I had internet access on my laptop again. Luckily, I was able to walk around a mile to a friend that was still up at 1AM and stayed there. I sent a note to the host -he said that if "he had known earlier" he could have called to get it unlocked. I apologized for not timing my flight cancellation around the host's calendar and said that I wasn't going to walk back to the place at 1AM for him to tell me how to unlock the gate.
The host has now denied my refund request even though I never walked into his place (including an $80 cleaning fee!) and he gave me the wrong check in instructions at 10PM at night. I have talked with 3 different AirBNB customer service people and am making no progress. And to top it off, the first time I submitted this post, I got an error message and had to restart it. Should I just give up? This situation seems to cut and dry - I can't believe I am wasting so much time on it.
