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Your worst accomodation experience?


FiveAus

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On Sunday I "escaped" from five days in the AirBnB from hell. Two friends and I travelled to Sydney, with our dogs, to exhibit them at some big dog shows. One of my friends had booked the accomodation on AirBnB and in the listing it looked fine. Pet friendly, close proximity to the Sydney Showgrounds, right around the corner from some decent restaurants and delis.


We contacted the owner to confirm that multiple dogs were fine, and they were.


Unfortunately we didn't see the most recent review, which must have been left between our booking and when we arrived.


We had a 12 hour drive to get there and pulled up about an hour before dark. To an old house on one of the busiest roads in Sydney. It looked derelict. Abandoned. Waist high weeds lined the driveway and the steps leading up to the front door. The skirting boards around the base were all rotten and broken, revealing mounds of garbage under the house.


We entered and discover the house was kind of "grimy". Not filthy but not quite clean either. On further inspection we realised there'd been no cleaning done between the last guests departure and our arrival. We went in search of clean towels and eventually found a pile of dirty ones, unwashed in the washing machine. We washed them but couldn't take a shower until they were dry the following day,


After 12 hours in the car, we were looking forward to giving the dogs a run in the "pet friendly, secure backyard". We opened the backdoor to view a yard full of chin high weeds that had gone to seed. Each time we brushed against them, they left sharp sticky seeds all over us and the dogs. The yard was unusable. It had been the main attraction of the accomodation.


My friend contacted the owner who's excuse was that it had been too wet to mow. Hmmmm, grass and weeds don't get that high and go to seed in two weeks and it hadn't been wet the past few days. She promised it would be done within a day. It wasn't and when we left five days later, it was still growing.


We spent hours each day picking seeds out of our dogs coats and out of their faces, where they liked to burrow into their skin.


When we were finally able to shower, we discovered the shower leaked all over the floor. It was held together with gaffer tape at the base which clearly wasn't working. The loo also leaked and after five days of a leaky bathroom, there was a definite odour.


The sheets on my bed had cigarette burns on them. I was also greeted with the lovely touch of a chocolate on the pillow. Well, the wrapper. Someone had eaten the chocolate but the thought was there.


On making breakfast we discovered that we couldn't have the electric jug and the toaster on at the same time, or it would short the power out and one of us would have to trek down to the front yard, around the side, dodging waist high weeds and trying not to get covered in sticky, sharp seeds, to the meter box to switch the breaker back on.


There was a directive to wash the dishes before checking out. However there was no dishwashing liquid. The only cleaning implement to deal with the floors was a broom with a broken head, and no dustpan and brush to gather up the sweepings. The sink contained a filthy old dishcloth that should have been binned after each guest but was obviously being recycled. And the small pantry held a grimy assortment of very, very out of date sauces and other condiments.


However, the tiny lounge room contained an upright piano and a set of encyclopaedia. A full set in a fancy bookcase. Because who wouldn't want accomodation without a sing-a-long and some very outdated heavy books!

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Seayork2002

A b&b in Lincoln uk where we could see the owner blokes silhouette and hear him peeing from our room


A hotel in West Perth was unclean with mould in the bathroom but the bed was clean and comfortable and tv worked so we coped

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A pet friendly weekend away down Anglesea area which was advertised as a one bed studio accom with many areas for dog to run..


When we got there it was the underneath of some couples house, it was their garage basically with a bed and chest of drawers as a kitchen.. you could hear the couple walking in the uninsulated floorboards and chatting and it was horrible.


DH was so upset we spent money we drive back to Melbourne after an hour or so as it was horrible weather amd we didn’t have raincoats and would have been inside the whole time.

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ClaudiaCosette

Reading these descriptions makes me shudder!


My worst was a hostel in Krakow, Poland in 2004 with two friends. We were young, naive and had just arrived after a sleepless night on an overnight train from Budapest. We just wanted a place to sleep for a couple of hours in the morning, and checked into the hostel I'd booked online (it had looked fine and had good reviews). They demanded to keep our passports. The room was a shared, co-ed dorm with about 20 bunk beds in it. It was filthy and there were dirty clothes, towels etc strewn everywhere. There were couples visibly having sex on some on the bunks. There were no lockers or anywhere secure to leave our belongings. I'd stayed in plenty of hostels and I know that a shared room is no picnic, but this was way worse than any thing I'd ever seen.


We took one look at the room, one look at each other, and said "we're leaving". As we tried to tell the reception staff why we wanted to leave, they refused to return our passports. We held our ground and said they were welcome to keep the money we paid, we just needed our passports back. Eventually we got them back, found the nicest fancy hotel we could find and splashed as much cash as we could afford on the best hotel room I've probably ever stayed in. We really needed it after that experience!

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Oh wow! That does sound awful! Definitely leave an honest review.


Over Christmas we had a horrendous Airbnb experience, and it has completely turned me off ever using Airbnb again, unless there is literally no other option. It wasn’t just the experience itself, rather Airbnb’s response that sealed the deal for me!

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The shower in the hostel in NYC was disgusting. Ankle deep water in the shower well as the drain was clogged. Ugh. I also wouldn't sleep under the sheets as they didn't appear very clean to me, so slept on top with my clothes as blankets - luckily the heating worked well as it was mid winter and snowy.

The hostel's location was fabulous. A year or two later it was closed down for health code violations.


Another one was a hotel in Melbourne (way back in the early 2000s). Was a non air-conditioned hotel room with no bathroom. In a heatwave in January. Room was right above a night club so doof-doof music until dawn and had to have window open. In the middle of the night my door was opened - key had been given to another guest. I pushed a chair against door after that and barely slept with heat and fear. Also no TV. Dark ages. I had gone and bought a small radio (days before internet freely available like now)

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StillFreddiesMum

We've had a couple of bad experiences but nothing compared to PPs.


When we had DD#1 she was in the SCN after birth for about 2 to 3 weeks and we ended up crashing at a hotel that was literally across the road from the hospital so we didn't have to travel back and forth to home so I could try and breastfeed her / cuddle her. When I say "hotel" it was old, grimy, it actually stank of cigarette smoke, they had a "breakfast buffet" and I went down for breakfast once or twice. Think 'botullism on a plate'. The whole place smelt of smokes, I ended up just staying in our room during the day between seeing DD#1 . Everything was dirty - the bed, the sheets, the walls. I would walk across to this lovely, shiny, clean hospital where DD#1 was in her crib, do my best to feed her, (breast / bottle or the nurses would do the tube) cuddle her and just be overwhelmed with how much I loved this little thing - and then walk back to this disgusting, dirty, grimy "hotel".


In the end I said to DH I would rather drive to and from the hospital multiple times a day than stay there any more.

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Toss up between a place we crashed at in Sydney in the middle of the night after having attempted to drive from Brisbane to Canberra in one hit. We were too tired to notice how bad it was when we arrived but woke up to dirty sheets, bedspreads that had probably hadn't been washed since 1973 and a shower that was so filthy I was too scared to use it. As we were leaving I noticed a massive sign out the front advertising their hourly rates. :nauseated_face: :face_vomiting:


Then there was a place we stayed at in London. Exh booked it because it was really cheap. It was cleanish but wasn't actually a room. It was more like an L shaped hallway at the end of the floor that they had managed to squeeze two single beds in at either end of the L and then the tiniest bathroom I'd ever seen (think toilet virtually in the shower) in the middle. It was well located and we didn't spend much time there because we were out all day, but geez it was a squeeze and claustrophobic being in it.

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Seayork2002

As a guest this was great but in a London hotel in Earls Court there was a shower cubicle in the room, not in a bathroom/ensuite just there on carpet in the room


It was clean enough but long term not sure how the carpet would have coped, we had white carpet in the bathroom in a rental in Leeds and after we were there 6 months it was getting grey around the bath area


I stayed in another hotel in Victoria area that was the size of a cupboard but I was young and free so it was all good it may have been the same one the Rastafarian manager and I watched the Baftas together while he smoked some funny smelling cigarettes, I hated the smell but was fine with him doing it and we had fun watching it together, back before there was tvs in all the rooms

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I've stayed in multiple shared hostel dorms where people had sex in the bunks - part of the fun baby! And part of the reason it's five pounds per night.

The thing about air b n b's is they're not hotels. Any dickhead can rent out any hovel they like. Make sure you leave detailed reviews; FiveAus I hope you've written what you wrote above for your review.

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squeekums-the-elf

that sounds horrible


In my carnie days we stayed at a hotel in Pt Augusta, last minute booking and rest of town booked out apart from this place

Pull up, old hotel/pub, looks a bit seedy

the whole room only had 2 single, old beds and a shared bedside table, no tv, not even a clock radio

The towels were a good 20 years old, ratty, holey, no pressure in shower

Can tell a broom or vacuum had never seen the room

So at that point we went for dinner at another pub, start talking to the bar tender, they ask where we staying, cue look of horror. He proceeds to warn us that the hotel we in had a stabbing only the week before and warn us to keep our van out front, in the light due to theft risk

We eat, get back, move van and try to go to bed, only to hear the hotels guard dogs barking all night and my friend jumping up when they bark to check on van

We got no sleep, now thats due to the dogs, uncomfortable bed and scratchy as fuck blankets


The next year we booked weeks in advance and got the gated, new build motel for only $40 more

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Seayork2002

I have never stayed in an airbnb always hotel,,motels, pubs, I love the British B&Bs though


Although I travelled the UK and Europe a bit I think I genuinely missed out by not staying in hostels, I stayed in one for a a few nights but that was it the rest was hotels and B&Bs


There was one pub when I was a kid Cobar that was an experience we held the towels up and saw the light, although DH is a little wary sometimes I am full on in love with the drive up outside motels always loved them since I was knee high to a grasshopper

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Driving across the Nullarbor a few years ago with a 11 month old baby and arriving in Norseman to what I thought was a nice grand building converted to a bnb. The main building was beautiful but we were in one of the old mining donga's at the back of the property that she rented to FIFO workers where the floor was rotten with holes broken through... I think it was just being held together by the lino! Every step I was terrified I would fall through it. Add in the disgusting shower and grubby bed and I was in tears and just wanted to get my baby out of there but the town was booked out and we were hours from anywhere and had just done a 9hr drive.

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Hostel in Amsterdam. As well as the obligatory couple having sex a metre away from me, the toilet flushing caused water to come up into the sink and no latch on the shower door to stop people coming in. Canal house steps, there was no way I could walk down them with my heavy backpack on my back so I just stood at the top of the steps and pushed it down.


Two of the guys in my room were out on the magic mushrooms so came back to the room just as I was getting up in the morning. I was treated to them getting undressed a few centimetres from my bed.

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Kiwi Bicycle

When I was living in Singapore a friend stopped by for a few days to visit. Living at grandmas meant we couldn't have her stay there. DH found a self contained 2 bed beach chalet ( hotels are expensive) that the government owned and rented out. We rock up and were so disppointed. The tiled floor was filthy including the bathroom ( bare feet got black). The mattresses were vinyl foam ( like at school camp) and the entire place hadn't been cleaned. We were only there one night but we didn't linger long, just went riding our bikes with our friend and ate out. It wasn't worth the $ 150 per night we paid.

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Guest Chamomile

I’ve had similar terrible Airbnb experiences. Not worth ruining a trip with bad/unsafe accom.

Edited by Chamomile
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Jane Jetson

Not as bad as some of these, more weird than anything else.


Once upon a time my very cheapskate employers (back in the 90s) went one step below the cheaper rooms they usually booked us into for a conference. It was in Melbourne, somewhere nearish the convention centre, and it appeared to have been a very (very) recent and not entirely complete conversion from a different type of accommodation. We weren't sure if that was rooms by the hour, some sort of assisted accommodation, or both.


Anyway there was all the usual stuff that PP have mentioned - very grotty, bedspreads from 1981, grimy little bathroom with a toilet that filled ominously before draining if you flushed it, a miasma of stale smoke - but there was all the weird stuff too.


Like the fact that most of the rooms looked out onto a damp, cramped little courtyard - several floors of it - full of plastic plants. Your window looked out onto the walkway and people on the walkway could see right in if you had your flimsy brown curtain open. The first thing I did when I finally found my room was shut that curtain quick smart, and of course it didn't quite go all the way to covering the window, did it? None of them appeared to from what I could see walking past.


To get to your room you had to go around a lot of twisty turny hallways, and then they'd open out suddenly into strange little communal areas. There were a couple of TV rooms and what might have been a smoking room (they were all smoking rooms lol). They all had a couple of middle-aged men in them, staring silently at the TV and at anyone who walked past, and if these guys were business travellers, they were definitely in town for the Threadbare Old Brown Polyester conference. By the third or fourth day I knew the circuitous route to my room by using the TV rooms as landmarks.


Given the flimsy lock on the door and the thought that anyone could see in, I slept with a chair under the doorknob and my eyes open. I'd have slept on the floor so as to be invisible from the window but the bed was the lesser of two levels of filthy, so I couldn't make myself do it.

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Hills Mum Bec

Many years ago before Air BnB and reliable home internet I booked a night away for our wedding anniversary in the Barossa. It was described as a self contained apartment with an inground pool. This was back in the day where you picked accommodation from a catalogue and you would be lucky if you got one or two tiny photos of the actual place. The weekend was super hot so we were looking forward to using the pool and as I was PG we hadn't planned to do any wine tasting or anything. Rock up at the accommodation and our self-contained apartment was actually just a bedroom with an ensuite in the owners house that had it's own external door and the owner was in the middle of hosting a huge family BBQ and the pool was packed with very noisy children. My visions of a nice relaxing, romantic weekend sitting by a pool were shattered and we ended up spending the whole time in the bedroom playing card games.

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The thing about air b n b's is they're not hotels. Any dickhead can rent out any hovel they like. Make sure you leave detailed reviews; FiveAus I hope you've written what you wrote above for your review.

 


My friend booked it so she needs to leave the review but I've written it for us. Our other friend left a set of keys there so we are waiting for them to be mailed home before the review is left.


This is my review:


We booked this place for five nights, we were exhibiting dogs at the Sydney Royal Easter show and the accomodation was nearby and dog friendly. It sounded perfect.




I'll start with the positive points:

The interior was comfortably furnished.
The kitchen contained everything you could need to self cater.
It was located right around the corner from a superb Italian deli and some very good Asian restaurants.


The not so positive:

When we pulled into the driveway, the place looked abandoned. Waist high weeds in the driveway and a very overgrown garden greeted us. The steps leading up to the front door were lined with weeds growing up through the concrete and it was clear the place hadn’t seen any maintenance in quite a while.




On entering the house, it became clear fairly quickly that a cleaner had not been since the previous guests. The dishes in the cupboards were still dirty (there was no dishwashing liquid), one of the beds had an empty sweets wrapper on it and sheets with cigarette burns.
We searched high and low for clean towels and eventually found a bundle of unwashed ones in the washing machine. There is no dryer so we washed them but couldn’t take a shower until they were dry the following day.




After a twelve hour drive with our dogs we’d been looking forward to giving them some exercise in the “dog friendly, secure backyard”. We opened the back door and were horrified to find more waist high weeds covering the entire yard. All the weeds had gone to seed and every time we brushed against them we were covered in sharp, sticky seeds. We spent hours each day removing them from the dogs coats as it was impossible to avoid them, getting in and out of the car and also toileting the dogs on lead. It was not possible to leave them off lead in the yard. The entire yard is a disgrace, completely unusable and definitely not as advertised.




We contacted the owner and requested the grass be cut, and she said it would be done the next day, but someone needed to be there. If we couldn’t be there she would get her cleaner to attend. We couldn’t be there as we were exhibiting the dogs at the show. When we arrived back after a day out, the yard hadn’t been touched and her excuse then was that it was impossible to get someone to mow over Easter. And yet she had told us the grass WOULD be mowed.




When we could eventually shower, we discovered the shower leaks and so does the toilet. The shower appears to be cobbled together with duct tape to stop the leaks but it’s not working. After 5 days of leaking shower and toilet, the bathroom had a definitely odour to it.

We would have liked to clean up after ourselves each day but the only implement to deal with the floors was a broom with a broken head, and no dustpan to collect the sweepings in. There was no dishwashing liquid, although there was a directive to wash the dishes before leaving. We used shampoo. The kitchen sink contained a well used dishcloth that should have been binned after each guest, and a fresh one provided. Or disposable ones provided for daily use.




The place was cheap, we had expectations of basic, entry level accomodation. But we also expected well maintained, clean and with a pet-friendly yard as advertised. It was none of these things and it’s shameful that AirBnB even have it listed. In these Covid times, thorough cleaning is essential and it was very obvious that no cleaning had been carried out. Nor has there been any maintenance done in the yard for months. The owner made the excuse that it has been too wet to mow, but it’s only been wet for a couple of weeks. It takes longer than that for grass and weeds to get over a meter high and go to seed.

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Did you complain to Airbnb? We had a place in Sydney...not convinced it had been cleaned at all between guests, dirty sheets, dirty bathroom-even had an empty nit shampoo bottle in the bathroom rubbish bin. Grass was over grown so backyard was unsuitable for the kids and all the bins were full. No cutlery, only Asian type soup spoons, all the ‘clean’ tea towels were neatly folded but still all wet etc They offered to send their cleaner around 24hrs after we got there but DH and oldest ds were out and I wasn’t comfortable being there alone with the cleaner. (Plus I’d already done a clean)

Ended up getting some money back and our cleaning fee refunded as they clearly hadn’t used the previous people’s cleaning fee

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Either the BnB in Wicklow, Ireland, with the sheets that did not look to have been a) recently washed, or b) primarily composed of natural fibres,


or the pub in Bendigo we stayed at about 17 years ago which had good reviews in Lonely Planet, but when we got there our room appeared to be right above the kitchen so we had a lovely and all pervasive aroma of stale cooking oil and deep friend food the entire time...

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Phillipa Crawford

Back in the 80's

The caravan park in Perth

Mattresses were bare foam, no covers; so were heavily decorated with down from other people's sleeping bags.

Shelving was covered with tiny dead bugs.

On checkout they had to 'inspect' the van before we left and found a broken window so refused to return our bond - no inspection before we moved in and there is no way we did this. I am sure they 'found' it at the end of every rental.

No internet, no leave a review days.


But the 'best' one was the one in Edinburgh. It may actually have been very nice,but when we arrived there was no reception area and they weren't answering their phone. Turned out that despite the blurb it was just a key lock box and we hadn't been given a code.

We went into a pub on the property, thinking they were the operators and the comment was "Oh the place no-one can ever get the keys to" It was about 5 degrees, 9pm at night and we had our 11 year old with us. I was envisaging wandering the streets and freezing to death. (We did get a Premier Inn).


We have been fairly lucky with our Airbnb's. Had one in Sunbury, the caretaker lived next door and used the kitchen when no guests. He'd forgotten we were coming and had to clean the place as we came in. But bedding etc all clean and neat

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Fruitmincepies

I’m so sorry your experience was so terrible [mention]FiveAus[/mention] (and the review sounds ver fair). But great thread topic!

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I've had nothing but great airbnb experiences. We make every effort to only book those which are not suitable for someone to live in full time, or that the owners wouldn't want to have someone living in full time.


Our Paris one though, was pretty funny. The wall between the bedroom and the bathroom next door was made of glass. The whole place was the size of a shoebox as inner city paris apartments can be (bloke travelled a lot, and put his place on airbnb when he was gone).


We got gastro from our second day there - good thing it wasn't a romantic weekend away. He'd warned us that the plumbing meant he had to use specific toilet paper, and please use sparingly or it blocks the plumbing of the building.


When he checked in on us during the week, I said that we were certainly getting the benefit of the five floors of stairs (happily, it was gorgeous, centuries old spiral staircase), he said 'that's the great thing about Paris - the food goes right through you. Little did he know.

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I've had nothing but great airbnb experiences. We make every effort to only book those which are not suitable for someone to live in full time, or that the owners wouldn't want to have someone living in full time.


Our Paris one though, was pretty funny. The wall between the bedroom and the bathroom next door was made of glass. The whole place was the size of a shoebox as inner city paris apartments can be (bloke travelled a lot, and put his place on airbnb when he was gone).


We got gastro from our second day there - good thing it wasn't a romantic weekend away. He'd warned us that the plumbing meant he had to use specific toilet paper, and please use sparingly or it blocks the plumbing of the building.


When he checked in on us during the week, I said that we were certainly getting the benefit of the five floors of stairs (happily, it was gorgeous, centuries old spiral staircase), he said 'that's the great thing about Paris - the food goes right through you. Little did he know.

 

I was in Paris in March 2020, just before Covid sent us home. I was travelling with a female friend and we were joking that we were turning into an old married couple.

We walked into our room in Paris and decided we might as well be an old married couple. The two single beds in the room were pushed together to make one large bed, there was only enough space around the edges to shuffle sideways, and to get into the bathroom you had to open the door, step in and step sideways in front of the shower, close the door then step the other way to use the loo.

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