Hi all,
I booked a place in Toronto for 28 days with my husband and my infant.
The host started acting weirdly but it did not alarm me. Weird things were asked. One of those being "not to approach the building concierge".
We checked in and directly saw the listing was unclean, filthy.
I then realised there was no sofa bed as included in the listing (just a sofa). We required that as my husband was going to use it.
We try to look for the blinds, nothing.
I directly send photographs to the host showing the state of the flat and ask for a cleaning team to be sent the next morning.
We also ask about the blinds.
Host apologies for the state of the flat and says a cleaning team would come first thing in the morning. Host says she will check with her husband how the blind works (?!).
At that stage I know something is off, I can see there are no blinds at all, the host does not know the flat.
The next day no cleaning team shows up in the morning. I follow-up with the host that then says the team would come at 1pm. Nothing... we continue to follow-up and finally a lady shows up at 4pm for a "touch up" without even a vacuum or floor cleaning equipment. Stays less then 1 hour and leaves. Flat is still filthy.
Out of desperation, I start cleaning myself. I can't stay like that with a newborn... I feel disgusted.
After several attempts, we finally got the "host" on the phone. We ask about the blinds / sofa, she gives a blurry answer and finally admits: this is not her place, she has never been in that flat, she has never been in canada and is based in manilla, the profile is fake (fake name and profile picture). She is hired by a company to manage this listing among others on airbnb.
We proceed to contact airbnb. They come back to us the next day and tells us that the host has agreed we can have an alteration of the reservation and be refunded the remainder of the stay. We ask airbnb to guarantee we will be refunded and they do guarantee it. We are relieved.
Based on that we book another flat on airbnb and leave.
Airbnb then comes back to us one day after and says "sorry the host changed his mind and now does not want to pay back. Nothing else we can do about this."
We escalated this to a supervisor who said the same and closed the claim without even letting us respond.
We only left because we had that guarantee otherwise we would have stayed as its not in our budget to pay that much money.
Out of the last 5 months we used airbnb for 4 full months without any issues. I believe we are good guests.
What can we do ?
Thank you.