AirBnB horror stories? Hi (cost, hotel, claustrophobia, hotels)

[Jill_Schramm]

Anyone have any good AirBnB horror stories? I Googled this and the ones I found seemed to be mainly from the hosts’ perspective (guests had a raucous party and trashed the place). How about from the travelers’ perspective?

Our worst AirBnB experience wasn’t exactly a horror story, but it was bad enough to make us cancel our reservation after the first night and move into a hotel. The main thing that went wrong is that the AirBnB (a camper) did not actually have potable or even relatively clean water (as expected and advertised). The host texted me about the issue about 3 hours before we arrived and said that it would probably be fixed before our arrival, but just wanted to give me a head’s up that we might not be able to shower or use the water to cook on the first night. Well, it wasn’t fixed when we arrived and it wasn’t fix by the afternoon of the second day either. Instead I heard more than I wanted to hear about plumbing issues in RVs and lots of whining about how hard it was to get a plumber to come out (maybe they didn’t want to pay for emergency service?).

This was the major thing that went wrong, but there were so many other issues too:

So,

1) No potable water.
2) Very difficult to find. Even with Google maps and instructions from the host, we got lost, we had to call and get step-by-step instructions over the phone.
3) Major space issues. I have AirBnB’d in campers before and know that space can be tight. But this was really, really tight. I actually paced the paceable area (the space we could move in) and found that it was about 20 square feet — 10 feet by 2 feet. Later, I paced the **bathroom** at our hotel and it was larger! The space was so cramped we couldn’t even unpack all our bags and left half of them in the car. It was also so cramped I couldn’t have really cooked anything (although there were the elements of a full kitchen there) even if we had had water as there was about 2 square inches of counter space. The bathroom and the shower were the smallest I have ever seen. Honestly, if you happens to be on the tall side or overweight I don’t think you could have actually gotten in.
4) Weird access issues. We got into the camper, closed the screen door, but then couldn’t get out. We were trapped! We had to call the hosts to get instructions on how to get out. (You had to slide a panel on the screen door then reach you arm out and use the outside handle to open the door from the inside. There was no direct way of opening it from the inside. They could have at least included instructions on the door!). Not a good experience for anyone with a tendency to claustrophobia!
5) The place seemed pretty clean, but we found a large, kind of scary-looking spider on the ceiling and just pretended it wasn’t there …


Anyway, like I said, we stuck it out for a little while, then bailed and checked into a hotel. (We got a full refund for the remaining nights of our reservation.)

You?

ETA: I’m not sure why there is a “Hi” in the title of this thread. Also, not sure how to edit it out

[StealthRabbit]

Dogs in Ireland,
'country manor house', lots of dogs, big dogs, wet dogs, muddy dogs (on the couch)

We had an entire wing of the house / estate / castle, but the dogs slept outside our chamber door and if you wanted to use the bath in the night there would be a lot of barking and chasing.

The dogs ate at the table.

Host loved dogs, but we only saw the host for a few minutes when we arrived, after that we had to deal with the dogs ourselves (and the dogs were not friendly to strangers).

Every Air B&B in Ireland had a lot of dogs (who ruled the estate)

Pet (working farm dog) owner for 60+ yrs, My dogs have never been keen on being inside a 'people' house, and they only bark if there is a really good reason to bark. (Tax assessor or sheriff arrival...)

B&B's in Ireland did not have the same issue, due to strict reputation to uphold. (and likely liability issues)

[Jill_Schramm]

Originally Posted by StealthRabbit

Dogs in Ireland,
'country manor house', lots of dogs, big dogs, wet dogs, muddy dogs (on the couch)

We had an entire wing of the house / estate / castle, but the dogs slept outside our chamber door and if you wanted to use the bath in the night there would be a lot of barking and chasing.

The dogs ate at the table.

Host loved dogs, but we only saw the host for a few minutes when we arrived, after that we had to deal with the dogs ourselves (and the dogs were not friendly to strangers).

Every Air B&B in Ireland had a lot of dogs (who ruled the estate)

Pet (working farm dog) owner for 60+ yrs, My dogs have never been keen on being inside a 'people' house, and they only bark if there is a really good reason to bark. (Tax assessor or sheriff arrival...)

B&B's in Ireland did not have the same issue, due to strict reputation to uphold. (and likely liability issues)

Wow. You have experience with dogs and we’re annoyed. I can’t even begin to imagine how freaked out a cynophobe would be.

I never AirBnB’d in Ireland, but my husband and I did have one unusual lodging experience there. We were trying to check into a country inn and the staff were being extremely weird (I forget exactly how since it was many years ago). It turns out that there was a wedding going on, the staff were otherwise occupied and some drunk wedding guests had decided it would be great fun to impersonate the staff. So we had random drunk wedding guests pretending to check us in and show us to our rooms.

[id77]

The very first time I used AirBnB:

Booked a room at a B&B through them 6 months prior to our arrival date. Took money, everything confirmed.

Two months prior to arrival, we get an email saying our reservation has been cancelled and money refunded. Well, we're going to a high-traffic destination at peak demand, so we say we need alternative accommodations. They find us a bedroom in someone's house that's a downgrade from our original room at 150% of the cost. Given hotels at that point were $1,000+ a night for two star places, we take the room.

The morning of our arrival, we receive a call from the ORIGINAL B&B asking when they should expect us to arrive. We're dumbfounded and ask why they're asking us when they cancelled our reservation 4 months ago. They indicate they didn't that it must have been AirBnB that did it.

We call AirBnB and ask about this, and are told that the previous B&B changed owners and that invalidated their status. AirBnB cancelled the reservation, but didn't tell the B&B and didn't tell us it was because they initiated the cancellation over policy reasons rather than because the room was no longer available.

We were, needless to say, livid.