Our First (And Last) #AirbnbFail Experience
There are many articles online reporting that airbnb has a secretive department dedicated to extinguishing guest and host horror stories before they get too much coverage. Last summer, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that “Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away,” and that “When things go horribly wrong during a stay, the company’s secretive safety team jumps in to soothe guests and hosts, help families—and prevent PR disasters.” After our first airbnb experience, we believe that it’s because their business model is an absolute rat’s nest of risk and disappointment. As the Bloomberg article states, one of the first Silicon Valley VCs that airbnb approached for funding was Chris Sacca (who funded the likes of Uber, Instagram, and Twitter). After the pitch, he recalls pulling the founders aside and saying, “Guys, this is super dangerous. Somebody’s going to get raped or murdered, and the blood is gonna be on your hands.” He chose not to invest. And based on our interactions with the company, we don’t blame him.
Welcome to Airbnb Hell.
For more than a year, we’ve been documenting our family travel experiences on our YouTube channel. If you’ve watched any of those episodes, you know that most of our trips are part of our Inspirato Pass membership, which gives us access to some of the best homes, resorts, and hotels around the globe. But there are still times that we have to find places to stay outside of the Inspirato program. We recently found ourselves in the position of needing weekly lodging in Denver and after pondering all of the hype around short-term house rentals, we decided to forgo the crazy costs of multiple hotel rooms and instead try airbnb for the first time.
Here’s why it will be the last.
“Brand New” and “Modern”
To get started, we pulled up airbnb.com and performed a thorough search for the nicest rentals we could find in the Stapleton / Central Park neighborhood where we needed to stay. We came across a listing titled, “Brand New Modern Stapleton Home.” Perfect.
We clicked. The photos looked great and the 4.8-star rating average was backed up with guest reviews that were almost all positive. We read the listing in its entirety. We compared it to all other options. We liked what we saw. So we booked it for the 3 separate periods that we needed. Foreshadowing: Those reservations were non-refundable.
Several weeks later, we arrived for our first check-in. We were a bit early, so we texted with the owner to request early access. She responded rather promptly (yay!) and indicated that we could enter the home as soon as the cleaning person was done. Eventually, she texted to let us know that the cleaner was out and we could enter the home. That’s where things got… surprising.
When we tapped in the deadbolt code (more on this in a moment) and walked inside, we found ourselves face-to-face with the cleaning lady. er… cleaning girl? She appeared to be a teenager who, based on the many family photos we later saw throughout the home, was probably the family daughter. That’s certainly not a problem in and of itself, though it may have contributed to a few of the issues we encountered during our stay.
Here are a few of the failures with our Airbnb experience:
The door code was the same for all 3 of our stays. We assume that it doesn’t get updated after each stay or customized for each guest, which means any past guest (and anyone they’ve shared the code with) can probably enter the home at any time after their stay. We’re confident that we could enter the home right now (months after our last stay). Scary.
The home was not “brand new” as indicated in the title. In fact, we looked it up and it was a decade old.
The home was not “modern” except in the sense that it had modern construction (studs and drywall) and modern appliances like a microwave, central A/C, etc. The architecture was not modern. The furnishings were not modern. The decor was not modern. It seemed clear that a lot of the furniture and appliances could be decades old. Nevertheless, “modern” is a subjective term, so we’ll let this one slide.
The home was still filled with the owner’s belongings. While a bit inconvenient for us (we couldn’t unpack our suitcases into closets or dressers because those were already full), this isn’t against any airbnb rules. And while the only negative guest reviews we read pointed out the clutter, the owner replied to each one by stating that airbnb started as a service to help owners rent occupied homes, not dedicated rentals, and therefore it’s perfectly acceptable for homes to be packed with personal belongings. True, but maybe after all those reviews it would make sense to put that in the listing so that there aren’t more surprised or disappointed guests?
But we found some very odd stuff. When checking the dresser drawers to see if we could unpack our clothes, instead of available space we found things like personal checkbooks and used feminine hygiene products wrapped in toilet paper. We even found various un-capped medication bottles (full of medications) in lower cabinets. Yikes.
The house was filthy. This is where the cleaning girl comes into play. Not only was it not professionally cleaned, but it didn’t appear to have been cleaned at all. Rogue hairs were everywhere. Window sills were covered in spider webs. Mildew was rampant. Spots everywhere. The couch cushions hid everything imaginable (except all that loose change). Considering the fact that every booking includes a cleaning fee, this is borderline fraudulent.
It’s infested with black widows. Our 9-year-old son first alerted us to black widows on the side patio. We figured he saw some everyday spiders and assumed (as kids often do) that they were the most famous of species, but when we went to take a look, we realized he was correct. And when one of us took the trash bin from the garage to the alley on trash day (as instructed to do in the welcome letter), a black widow scurried away from lip of the container—precisely where we had grabbed it. Holy hell.
The place was beat to hell and maintenance seemed to be non-existent. We’d estimate that 35% of the light bulbs in the house were burned out. Carpets were filthy. Walls had more scuff marks than a racquetball court. The washing machine was held together with masking tape. Landscaping was dead. Patio furniture was destroyed. Wasp nests were everywhere (including 2 feet from the front door).
The listing said “onsite parking,” but once you arrive, the welcome sheet instructs you to park on an adjacent street instead (we parked in the cluttered garage anyway because that’s what we were promised in the listing).
The living room TV didn’t work. It’s just a smart TV that lets you log in to your own accounts to stream, but Netflix crashed every time you tried to play a show. We bought a $200 Apple TV and hooked it up so we had service during our stays.
The owners repeatedly entered the premises without notice. Even though the rental was for the entire home, the owner’s family accessed the premises repeatedly, without a heads-up or even a knock on the door. We know this partly because after returning from various outings, there would be additional belongings in the home and partly because of the time we opened the garage door and found 2 of their family members inside. Sketchy.
The story continues below, but here are a few photos we snapped after checking in:
Here’s what we paid Airbnb for these horror story stays:
Stay 1 (5 nights): $2,326.06 (~$465/night)
Stay 2 (5 nights): $1,913.69 (~$382/night)
Stay 3 (9 nights): $3,002.62 (~$334/night)
Total: $7,242.37
Immediately upon checkin, we messaged airbnb support to alert them to the situation and to ask for guidance. We wanted to know if we had the option to cancel and get a refund in the unlikely case that we could find an alternate home that was available. Most importantly, we wanted to tread lightly because at this point if they or the owner proactively canceled our 2 future stays based on our complaint, we could be screwed. And therein lied a problem because they told us we only had 24 hours to formally file a claim and be considered for any kind of refund. We opted to keep our options open to not risk a forced cancelation.
He offered us a $100 coupon for a “future” airbnb stay.
This was on August 8th. We heard back on August 22 with an apology for the “delay in getting back to you,” due to “an unusually high volume of requests.” They asked if we still needed help, to which we responded, “yes.” We then reiterated that we felt like they had us by the short-and-curlies because there was nothing keeping either of them from canceling our upcoming stays. We provided additional photos and additional details. We asked them to prevent retaliation from the owner if filed a claim.
We didn’t get a response.
On August 24, we sent more photos. More details.
We didn’t get a response.
There’s no need to give us a $100 coupon because after this experience, we have zero intention of ever using airbnb again.
On August 26, we got a response with another apology for the delay (he was unavailable for a few days). He offered us a $100 coupon for a future airbnb stay. To be clear, this means they offered a $0 refund on the current stays, which cost us over $7,000. We responded with, “There’s no need to give us a $100 coupon because after this experience, we have zero intention to ever use this service again.” They replied that they understood and just needed “a little longer to check all this…”
That was the last time we heard from a human being at airbnb.
This why we love Inspirato Pass
A better option, a better company
Our Inspirato Pass membership gives us access to a portfolio of pristine homes (including this one), resorts, and hotels, all for a flat monthly fee of $2,500/month
When we travel with Inspirato Pass (and other Inspirato services), we know that we have a fantastic portfolio of vetted properties from which to choose. We know that Inspirato employees constantly inspect and maintain this portfolio. We know that in the rare cases when a problem arises, they make it right—and they do it immediately. The premise that member ratings and reviews will weed out the bad apples is clearly erroneous—this experience makes that very clear.
If you’re in the business of marketing short-term rentals for your customers, then you have a responsibility to either weed out fraud or make it right when something slips through. Because we don’t put our trust in the millions of owners that we know nothing about—we put our trust in the brands that spend millions telling us we should. Inspirato gets that, so they get our loyalty. And airbnb? nfw.
We’ll never use Airbnb again. The experience was that bad.
We’ve given up on airbnb doing the right thing by us. And since we’ll never use them again, any policy changes will be irrelevant to us. But please like, comment, and share this story. By holding companies accountable for their content and poor customer service, we can show the industry as a whole that they can’t take advantage of the consumers who keep them in business.
