AirBnB service has become awful. We checked in at a place with smoke alarms going off non-stop and a full-blown roach infestation (all dead roaches, but we counted about 10-15 in the kitchen cabinets). Only started uncovering roaches after I tried to disconnect the alarms and a few dried up roaches fell out of the smoke alarm casing. I'm from the city and have lived in apartments with roaches. Not a germaphobe but I know a full-blown infestation when I see one. Needless to say we were pretty pissed. It was like 1AM so we ended up getting a cab to a hotel nearby.
Easy refund right? I had videos AND pictures of the whole thing (multiple kitchen cabinets, about 5-10 roaches on their backs each. smallish 1/2cm german roaches). Submitted it to AirBnB. What happened after was a complete shitshow that I never want to go through again and is the reason I will never use this service.
* Automated customer service kept closing our case because we were traveling and did not respond immediately to their questions in 12-24 hours (got basic questions like CAN YOU PLEASE DESCRIBE THE ISSUE? despite having submitted 10 images of ROACHES). Each time your case closes you get a different representative so we had to re-iterate the same story.
* AirBnB passed responsibility of refunding off to the host, who was playing dumb with us and was basically non-responsive for a week and pretended like nothing was off. They (host) later admitted to the airbnb rep that they did pay for regular pest control services.
* AirBnB told us we were not eligible for a refund because there were not obvious signs that it was a health hazard (such as bed bugs). What? This was extremely puzzling.So if you can't find proof of bed bugs you're SOL?
* Unrelated to the pests, but the host charged us an additional $100 as part of our stay for cleaning fee despite the fact that we left immediately and the only things that were out of place were the kitchen cabinets opened containing dozens of roach carcasses. Try making sense of that.
All in all after some pretty heated exchanges with the reps at airbnb and threats to publish the images online to expose the host they relented and gave me my refund. Will never go through this again with them.