About Toronto

We have used AirBnb for more than 150 nights over the years.

Our experience in Little Italy in Toronto was the worst ever. There was no Canadian congeniality, only angst and neurotic hostility.

Beth and I never complain and have never given a poor review until now. We have received scores of positive reviews.

It began with the host never sending check-in information. We sent a message as requested communicating our anticipated arrival time. The walk, and 18 stairs to the front door, was not shoveled in the midst of a snowstorm. We live with, and value weather as part of the experience but you have guests coming. At least try.

We called our host’s phone, rang the bell multiple times and were ready to give up when our bleary-eyed host Courtney appeared to let us in. She was already indignant and annoyed. We did not even know for sure we had the right address until she answered. The lights were off inside. The place looked deserted. She removed the key from the lockbox and thrust it at me as she closed the door behind her.

“I sent you the check-in instructions,” she said with the tone of an unapologetic, snotty 15-year-old girl embracing her first menstrual cycle.

We came in. She closed the door behind us after handing me the key. We kicked our shoes off so as to not track in snow and placed them on the undersized mat by the front door. She never sent us instructions.

Courtney showed us the long staircase to our second floor room and shared bathroom. 45 minutes after we showed up, check-in instructions appeared on Beth’s phone.

We were fatigued from traveling in a snowstorm and rested for 90 minutes before heading back down to leave for dinner in Little Italy at ZittoZitto Taverna, an excellent Italian restaurant where we had one of the best meals ever.

As we came down the stairs to leave we heard swearing “there is fucking snow in my house!”

Our shoes were gone.

“When you came in, you didn’t lock the door,” she said forgetting who last touched the door after her guests arrived. “The door blew open, the cat ran away, and everything on the floor got soaked. Now I will have to clean this all up! My floors could be ruined! It’s common courtesy to lock the door. I didn’t know I needed to include that in check-in instructions.” (Check-in instructions she never sent until after we were in our room.)

She had put our shoes in the kitchen sink and appeared hostile, enraged and out of control. We felt berated and disrespected.

We left for our meal feeling down, but shared a delightful dinner in spite of her harsh accusations, before trudging home through the snow.

Beth got another message during dinner about how Courtney was going to shovel around 8 when the snow let up. We still don’t know A.M. or P.M.

We trudged up the unshoveled sidewalk to the unshoveled stairs and slipped our way back in shortly after 9. I carefully locked the door and left our shoes on the too-small mat.

The place was quiet but of shoddy, lightweight construction with thin walls that transmitted noise and amateurish drywall finishing. The noise from plumbing upstairs echoed through the walls of our room. The bathroom door latch was broken. Our bedroom door would only stay closed if you pushed hard.

Beth received a hectoring message about noise and not disturbing other guests (there were none.)

We decided we would be leaving as soon as possible in the morning. If we had an option to sleep elsewhere in a warm bed on a cold winter night we would have taken it, even if we had to pay.

Beth decided she wouldn’t even shower in the morning because the tub was not comfortable. The sides were too high.

I decided to chance a shower in the morning. Too-small rough towels rested on a shelf over the toilet, so high up I had to climb on the toilet seat to reach them. Four bottles of shampoo rested on the tub floor.

I am reasonably fit, but it took effort to climb into the tub. Only one of the glass doors slid, on the far side of the controls, the other was fixed. That made it impossible to turn on the water and adjust it before entering. The shower controls were confusing. It took me 3 minutes of getting doused with cold water to figure out how it was supposed to work.

It took me another 3 minutes of getting doused with cold water to shut it off.

Even the caulk around the tile was uneven and looked like it was applied by a rookie on his first day.

We packed our things and headed out, leaving the key in our room because there was no way to lock the door and leave it inside. There were no instructions for what to do with the key after we left. I thought about locking it and leaving the key in the mailbox. We did that in St. John’s, Nfld. with Marilynn and Andy Jones, congenial, friendly hosts.

We even had a difference of opinion in Fort Bragg, Calif. Where we stayed at Pegasus Ranch in a garden shanty. I loved it. Beth didn’t. Que sera, sera.

As we exited to the 18-step staircase, my footprints from the night before were still in the snow but drifted over. It was now 10-inches deep. I would have shoveled if she left a shovel. It was 8:30 a.m. or so but it was better to kill time in a coffee shop in a snowstorm than to spend one-minute longer than needed in those quarters.

We decompressed and tried to rationalize our experience before our 11:30 a.m. food tour with a delightful woman named Nancee, the antithesis of our host and an AirBnb star.

As we killed time in a coffee shop, Beth found another snarky message from Courtney telling us we left the door unlocked again last night and asking us to leave by 10 a.m. because we couldn’t be trusted to lock the door and she had errands to run.

In hindsight, she likely came downstairs after we already fled the place and assumed the worst because it was her nature.

This place should not be rented. How it had a rating of 4.8 is beyond us. Shoddy construction, kitsch decorating and a snarky, disrespectful host does not reflect the standard of AirBnb.

I feel like we deserve a refund or credit for a future holiday. We complained to AirBnb and after a lengthy process and phonecall they gave us $50 off a future AirBnb stay.