My partner was in the same boat with a near slumlord experience in toronto. The pictures on the listing showed a basic but clean place. In person, there was a hole in one of the doors, a floor that was literally disintegrating, a kitchen sink that pulled out of the countertop when you tried to use it, etc.
Her negative review was removed after a complaint by the host, and then the host proceeded to libel her in the review they made with false statements. It took a battle and sending loads of pictures to AirBNB to get them to remove the false review of her and restore the negative review of the place.
Needless to say, I lost of a lot of trust in AirBNB that day. The "air cover" guarantee isn't worth the paper it's printed on. We've gone from 50:50 hotels:airbnb to hotels only, outside of extremely specific cases.
I've had good luck with AirBnB, but did have one similar experience, and there's no chance the place genuinely had reviews as good as were on the site (it was damn near a perfect rating). It was gross, plainly violating fire code (basement-of-a-house "apartment" without a single smoke detector anywhere in it), cluttered with the owner's (?) extra junk, tons of half-finished DIY work everywhere (exposed wires sticking out of open switch boxes and empty ceiling light boxes!), actual no-bullshit graffiti on the ceiling(!?). It looked like a friggin' trap house.
But it had damn near a five-star rating and the reviews were like "great place for my family!" et c. Something shady was going on, both with the host and with AirBnB, to make that happen, I'd say. It was shockingly bad.
Her negative review was removed after a complaint by the host, and then the host proceeded to libel her in the review they made with false statements. It took a battle and sending loads of pictures to AirBNB to get them to remove the false review of her and restore the negative review of the place.
Needless to say, I lost of a lot of trust in AirBNB that day. The "air cover" guarantee isn't worth the paper it's printed on. We've gone from 50:50 hotels:airbnb to hotels only, outside of extremely specific cases.