Hi!

So we have used Airbnb numerous times over the last few years and we’ve never had an issue. However, the apartment we’re currently staying in for the next 5 nights has some issues.

Firstly, there are cockroaches. On top of that the place is a bit messy and cluttered in general, which we would normally just deal with, but on top of the cockroaches it’s just gross.

Second, the hot water doesn’t work. We have to take freezing cold showers! The host spoke to his landlord and apparently it’s a problem with the whole building, so there’s nothing he can do about it.

We paid a lot of money to stay here- almost $800 for 6 nights and for it to have cockroaches and no hot water is pretty ridiculous. The host refunded us $75, but I feel that’s inadequate. We’re still paying $700 for a pretty crappy place.

We contacted Airbnb customer support and they basically told us to deal with it on our own. They told us to try and work something out with the host and to contact them once we’ve “exhausted all our options.” We’ve already contacted the host about the water and there’s nothing he can do. We don’t really want to mention the roaches right now because we’re worried he may get upset and kick us out, leaving us stranded in a foreign country.

And even if we do contact him, what is he going to do? He can’t fix the water and the roach problem wouldn’t be able to be fixed while we’re here, anyway.

Ideally we would have liked for Airbnb to help us find another place to stay, but they said there’s no guarantee they could do that.

Is there anything we can do? Has anyone been in a similar situation?

As I said, ideally we’d like to go somewhere else. But if we’re not able to I feel like we should get more than $75 back.

Thanks

Update: We ended up tweeting Airbnb about it and they escalated our claim. They offered us the option to leave the apartment and find a new place to stay and receive a 50% refund for the nights we had already stayed and a 100% refund for any nights we didn’t stay, or we could stay and receive a 50% refund of the entire trip. We chose the latter.