Thanks Sarah, I recently unicycled the length of South Korea.
Before I made the booking with the South Korean host, I asked if I could leave my bike box and suitcase at his place, because it's hard to unicycle a country carrying a suitcase and a box.
He said yes, but also said it would be at my own risk, because the items would have to be left in a small room at the top of the apartment stairwell. He went on to say he had personal items also stored in that location. I said I understood it was at my own risk, as long as the items were undercover, so I wnet ahead and booked his room.
I was very clear that I would be returning, after my ride, to collect my items. On the day of checking out, I messaged him to again check that it would be okay to leave my bike box and (locked) suitcase there, and that I would be returning on or around 6 June to collect them. He said that was no problem.
So off I went, unicycling South Korea for 14 days. I left my tent poles for a very expensive tent, some camping gear and waterproof bags in the bike box, thinking no one would likely steal that stuff because you can buy cheap Chinese camping gear in Korea. My suitcase I locked to an internal pipe, behind a rooftop stairwell door.
Imagine my suprise, when on 4 June, I messaged him to let him know I was returning to Seoul to collect the items I'd left and his message in response was something like "OMG OMG I threw your box out thinking you weren't coming back!"
So rather than the host checking with me, or actually reading the messages I'd previously sent, he assumed I wasn't returning, and 'had cleaners' so he claims, throw out items from my bike box, even though my box and suitcase were still there. He sent me a photo of the empty bike box.
I got to the apartment and magically, some of the packing material (only a small amount), had somehow then turned up in the box. But nothing else. My expensive tentpoles and assorted camping gear (which I was supposed to use for camping for the remainder of my trip!), were gone. I asked him surely the cleaners would have seen that these items were new, and not thrown them out. His response simply was that 'the cleaners couldn't have known'. It was irrelevant what the cleaners did or didn't do. He simply should not have thrown the contents out, should have contacted me or just simply read messages from me where I said I'd be back. Yes, he was doing me a favour storing those items, but I didn't expect the items to be thrown out by him.
The fun then started trying to get Airbnb to be responsive. It took 37 days for them to offer the same amount they'd offered on Day 1. Even after I'd returned to Australia and had to dig through old receipts (which they'd asked for). After me sending them one message a day, calling multiple times, having to explain the situation multiple times to multiple differenet 'help' desk staff. The help desk staff are grossly incompetent and all they can do is follow poor scripting that gives verbal assurance, with no action.
I was a loyal Airbnb customer for almost a decade. Their gross incompetence in mishandling this has made me not want to ever use them again.
