Oh man have I had a crappy last few days.
So I arrive at my Airbnb in Decatur, IL where I am supposed to spend 10 days of peace and quiet. But my second day there, I see a bedbug in the kitchen. I catch it under a glass, and I contact my host. My host sends an exterminator who tells me it is not a bedbug, and then smashes it to bits. I took pictures, and the thing was definitely a bedbug. Everyone who has seen my pics agrees, including an exterminator. I think the exterminator was either inept, or more likely in cahoots with the host.
I knew it was a bedbug, so I still vacated the property and cancelled the rest of my stay, which automatically refunded 50% of my costs. I will fight Airbnb for the remaining 50%, but to do so I need to actually contact Airbnb customer support, and they have been unreachable as presumably they are dealing with a lot of people unhappy with their Labor Day accommodations. Meanwhile the host is sending me name-calling messages.
Meanwhile I am back at my parents house in Chicago, washing my clothes to kill bedbugs, and am about to spray my car with bedbug poison I bought on Amazon. It is cramped and crowded here. My wife is depressed and difficult to deal with right now, but who can blame her: she has now had 2 vacations cancelled, one for COVID and one for bedbugs.
I'm still winding my way through the Airbnb bureaucracy. I finally reached a case manager today, who looked at my pictures of the bedbug, who forwarded me to the "department that handles this" where the woman was non-committal and said she'd reach out to the host for his side of the story. Still no clue whether I will get my ~$500 back or not.
Airbnbs are great when things go great, but this is my second time something went wrong, and in both cases the host quickly became verbally abusive and Airbnb was hard to reach. Hotels at least have dealing with customer complaints down to a dispassionate science.
I can't wait until this stupid pandemic is over and I can feel comfortable staying at hotels again.
