Airbnb guest shocked after paying £2,750 to stay in ‘shabby and dirty’ apartment in Edinburgh

An Airbnb guest was appalled after the ‘stunning’ Edinburgh apartment she had booked, priced at over £390 a night, was ‘shabby and dirty’ and littered with mould.

The anonymous mother and daughter had booked the property for a week from August 20-27 during the Edinburgh Fringe festival, spending £2,745 in total.

Although the listing described the apartment as “stunning” and spacious, the couple arrived to find the apartment in a state of disrepair.

The mother said EdinburghLive“When I found out how shabby and dirty the apartment was, I decided to file a complaint when I got home.

“It wasn’t just a quick tidy up that was needed, it needed a thorough cleaning and more to call it a ‘magnificent apartment’.

“I was there with my daughter, for the Fringe, and I couldn’t have found any other accommodation, so because we would be spending a lot of our time away from the apartment, and we could eat at the restaurant , and we would just use the apartment for sleeping, we decided to put up with it.

She took pictures around the property showing cracked and broken baseboards, cupboards strewn with black dirt and dust, mold in the fridge and chipped dishes.

“On the second day, we started noticing that the flat was not clean and there were parts of the flat that desperately needed fixing,” she said. “The living room door handle fell off because there were no screws to hold it in place.

“The bathroom door handle was held in place with tape, as if wired to the floor in the bathroom entrance.

“The exposed wood floor also looked very rough, maybe the tape covered some splintered wood as well.

“In the kitchen there were cupboards and drawers that had not been cleaned, a very dirty oven, chipped dishes and a refrigerator that had not seen a cleaning cloth on the outside and the dispenser of water was mouldy.”

She sent a lengthy letter of complaint to the Airbnb host upon her return, but was ignored.

After escalating the complaint through the home-sharing platform, she was first told she was not entitled to help as she had not reported the issues within 72 hours of arriving .

The guest was prompted to upload their complaint and refund request through the site’s resolution center, only to find out afterwards that the request went directly to the host, who denied it.

“I asked Airbnb what their responsibility was in allowing this process to support hosts who rent properties in this state. I have nowhere,” she said.

“Finally, after much hassling to speak with a supervisor, I received a message from someone claiming to be a supervisor.

“She reiterated that they cannot issue refunds without the support of the host.”

However, after EdinburghLive contacted, Airbnb has since apologized and offered the guest a partial refund.

A spokesperson said: “We were disappointed to hear of this experience and have contacted the guest to provide a partial refund – worth £750 – and a voucher as a gesture of goodwill.

“All of our customers are protected by AirCover for free on every booking and in the rare event that something does not go as planned, we will help you immediately if contacted within 72 hours of check-in.”