Last month I was in America again, attending a conference in Fort Lauderdale in Florida. After the conference I planned to spend a few days in Miami and booked three nights in an Airbnb in the Little Havana area. By now I’d managed to get an American sim card and an obliging young man at the university had sorted me out with Uber.
The Uber driver delivered me to the address, a detached, single-storey house rather like a Swiss chalet. The door stood slightly ajar. There was no bell so I knocked. No-one came. I shouted. I stuck my head in and shouted again, more loudly. Still nobody. I called the host on my mobile. There was only a recorded message saying that she wasn’t available to receive calls.
I went in and prowled round the house. It felt like the Mary Celeste. It looked as if it was occupied – computers lying around, television plugged in, fridge full of food etc. There were even a couple of pots of cooked food on the cooker; clearly recently cooked as it hadn’t yet gone mouldy. There appeared to be two bedrooms, one of which was locked. I went into the other one which I recognised as being the one intended for guests as the bed was the same as the one shown on the Airbnb website. The bed had been slept in but not by someone who was expecting to return as the bedding was piled in a crumpled heap and there were no belongings in the cupboards. I was beginning to feel like Goldilocks.
It was already dusk and getting dark inside the house but I couldn’t find a light switch anywhere. I groped round all the wall surfaces using my mobile phone as a torch until I found one. I tried repeatedly to phone the host, whose phone remained switched off. I wanted to go and ask the neighbours if they could throw any light on the situation but didn’t want to leave the house. I was afraid that if I closed the door the lock might spring into action and I’d find myself locked out. On the other hand I didn’t want to leave the door open as burglars might stop by and help themselves to my luggage. I swithered for a while. I could stay, go to bed in the used sheets, and hope that nothing terrible would happen during the night, or I could go to the neighbours. I really did not want to crawl under those crumpled sheets so I went across the road and was given a very warm welcome by a Cuban family. They didn’t know my host but had the phone number of her landlord. They called him and reported back to me with the news that she had gone off to Peru. He knew nothing further.
So clearly my next step would be to contact Airbnb. Easier said than done. Like most online operators they make it almost impossible to contact them by phone. It all has to be done by online chat. But my new Cuban friends had a friend who was an Airbnb host and she was able to give us the contact number. This is where the story gets very boring because it involves four hours of increasing exasperation as I try to get them to shoulder responsibility and sort me out with an alternative GODDAM BED FOR THE NIGHT.
Their first proposal was to offer me a selection of placements, with airbnb contributing $11.67 - ie,about £3 per night! - of any amount additional to what the original cost had been. Given that the accommodation now on offer cost about three times as much as the original cost this was sheer effrontery. Incensed, my new Cuban friend seized the phone from me and gave them an earful. Minutes later I got an online message from airbnb telling me that they'd upped their contribution to £200. So far so good - until I got to the place (ferried there by the Cuban lady) at midnight and discovered that the host spoke not a word of English and the accommodation was smaller than the average prison cell. That was how I saw it at the time anyway. The next day, when I was able to take a less jaundiced view, I discovered that the room – a tiny studio – was extremely well designed and top spec and its size didn't matter because it opened onto a large patio with palm trees and hammocks and cane sofas, and who needs to be inside when you’ve got the Florida weather and a space like that to lounge around in.
And let's not be too critical. I hadn't been mugged, murdered or dragooned into the white slave trade, and for that I'm thankful.
The Uber driver delivered me to the address, a detached, single-storey house rather like a Swiss chalet. The door stood slightly ajar. There was no bell so I knocked. No-one came. I shouted. I stuck my head in and shouted again, more loudly. Still nobody. I called the host on my mobile. There was only a recorded message saying that she wasn’t available to receive calls.
I went in and prowled round the house. It felt like the Mary Celeste. It looked as if it was occupied – computers lying around, television plugged in, fridge full of food etc. There were even a couple of pots of cooked food on the cooker; clearly recently cooked as it hadn’t yet gone mouldy. There appeared to be two bedrooms, one of which was locked. I went into the other one which I recognised as being the one intended for guests as the bed was the same as the one shown on the Airbnb website. The bed had been slept in but not by someone who was expecting to return as the bedding was piled in a crumpled heap and there were no belongings in the cupboards. I was beginning to feel like Goldilocks.
It was already dusk and getting dark inside the house but I couldn’t find a light switch anywhere. I groped round all the wall surfaces using my mobile phone as a torch until I found one. I tried repeatedly to phone the host, whose phone remained switched off. I wanted to go and ask the neighbours if they could throw any light on the situation but didn’t want to leave the house. I was afraid that if I closed the door the lock might spring into action and I’d find myself locked out. On the other hand I didn’t want to leave the door open as burglars might stop by and help themselves to my luggage. I swithered for a while. I could stay, go to bed in the used sheets, and hope that nothing terrible would happen during the night, or I could go to the neighbours. I really did not want to crawl under those crumpled sheets so I went across the road and was given a very warm welcome by a Cuban family. They didn’t know my host but had the phone number of her landlord. They called him and reported back to me with the news that she had gone off to Peru. He knew nothing further.
So clearly my next step would be to contact Airbnb. Easier said than done. Like most online operators they make it almost impossible to contact them by phone. It all has to be done by online chat. But my new Cuban friends had a friend who was an Airbnb host and she was able to give us the contact number. This is where the story gets very boring because it involves four hours of increasing exasperation as I try to get them to shoulder responsibility and sort me out with an alternative GODDAM BED FOR THE NIGHT.
Their first proposal was to offer me a selection of placements, with airbnb contributing $11.67 - ie,about £3 per night! - of any amount additional to what the original cost had been. Given that the accommodation now on offer cost about three times as much as the original cost this was sheer effrontery. Incensed, my new Cuban friend seized the phone from me and gave them an earful. Minutes later I got an online message from airbnb telling me that they'd upped their contribution to £200. So far so good - until I got to the place (ferried there by the Cuban lady) at midnight and discovered that the host spoke not a word of English and the accommodation was smaller than the average prison cell. That was how I saw it at the time anyway. The next day, when I was able to take a less jaundiced view, I discovered that the room – a tiny studio – was extremely well designed and top spec and its size didn't matter because it opened onto a large patio with palm trees and hammocks and cane sofas, and who needs to be inside when you’ve got the Florida weather and a space like that to lounge around in.
And let's not be too critical. I hadn't been mugged, murdered or dragooned into the white slave trade, and for that I'm thankful.
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