What just happened to us has felt so surreal that I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that AirBnB could be held to no more responsibility than to give us a full refund.
Two weeks prior to our visit to Paris I decided my family of seven could use a little more space than two tiny hotel rooms and booked a "nice apartment near the Pigalle district" for seven nights. Since then the host Louis and I had been in constant communication, mainly with him asking me to provide verification and detail of my arrival and departure. I remember thinking this guy was thorough and meticulous.
So the day came, and we arrived in Paris with our five minor children at 6 pm and were promised that a key would be available for pick up at a nearby locker. While I waited by the apartment with our kids and all our suitcases, my husband went to said locker to pick up the key by entering the code given to us. He was not even allowed to do that until 7 pm. But even when he did, the code did not work, and we quickly emailed the host who conveniently stopped being prompt and communicative, but who eventually replied that his cleaning agent was late. We tried calling his co-host/concierge (HostnFly), kept getting disconnected, couldn’t get a straight story out of anyone. Eventually, after two hours of increasing frustration on our and kids’ part, we were finally told that the house was not ready, AirBnb couldn’t find a suitable replacement, they would give us a refund for the first night, and we were to find an accommodation ourselves as they worked to solve the issue. By this time it was 8:30 pm and getting dark. But fine. Even as we felt we were being left high and dry in a foreign city at night, we tried to remain patient and hopeful that the house would be ready the following day as promised. We quickly booked whatever we could find, which was slim picking during this peak summer vacation time, and which turned out to be a hotel in a very unpleasant part of town, surrounded by street beggars and homeless settlements.
All night the host reassured us that he would try to get the place ready by noon, the time we needed to check out of our hotel, and when we called, his co-host said we could at least leave our luggage there if the house was not done. Allow me to stress that all this time all communication had been initiated from our end, and there was nothing offered by the host or anyone else to correct the situation.
To add insult to injury, the next morning we got a message telling us he “had someone verify that the apartment is clean and everything is working.” We thought yippee and almost went there, but fortunately we called the co-host to verify and found out the situation had not improved one bit, and the message was an automated email. Very soon after that we got notice from AirBnB that our reservation had been cancelled and an apology from the host saying that he still could not get in touch with his “concierge” aka co-host, and the apartment remained unavailable.
For the second time in less 18 hours we found ourselves stranded with 5 children with no place to stay, and again we had to scramble to find a suitable last minute accommodation for the rest of our stay. We tried different hosts to no avail and finally ended up in a non-ideal hotel and an additional $500+ expense.
What we experience certainly lends credence to the AirBnB unreliable reputation and has definitely stopped us from ever wanting to use AirBnB again in the future. We noticed that after cancelling, this host continued to list his place for the dates of our reservation, and there was nothing at all indicated on his profile that he has ever cancelled. Moreover, when I wrote him how deeply disappointed I was with this whole experience, he had the nerve to send me a canned response saying he “totally understand that it could be a little bit frustrated... For that reason I really hope that it did not prevent you from enjoying your stay at my place.” What an ass!
We have lost a lot of precious time and money, not to mention sleep, trying to salvage our vacation. In the end, I would like to request AirBnB to do a better job at protecting its customers. Enforce your consequences, give us a way to leave a less than positive review, and finally, reimburse us for the extra expenses we incurred from having to secure a new accommodation ourselves!!! Yet, all my complaints to AirBnB have fallen on deaf ears. Our case was closed without getting a reply. If anyone here could direct us to someone who actually cares about their company’s reputation, please post.
