Gingerbread

The Worst Property Management Service – I contacted Gingerbread Haus on June 12 about a place to stay in Adelaide via their Airbnb listing. I am have been diagnosed with terminal cancer & relocating from interstate to bring my little boy closer to family. I am also an experienced 5 star rated Airbnb traveller & 5 star rated Superhost of a premium Airbnb Plus. I was told to contact… Read more

Gingerbread Haus direct rather than by Airbnb. I did & explained my situation & asked if they could arrange a discount for a 4 week booking in winter & they agreed. I then asked if they could send a rental agreement & if I could pay by credit card & they agreed. The listing said it had a shared bathroom & I was told this was a mistake on the listing & it is a private bathroom. There were many other mistakes in their online listing which I did not bother to query because of the difficulty of getting an answer about even one question (there is a video which takes you to a random place in the US, the listing says it is 1 bedroom but elsewhere says it is 2, says it has sun loungers, barbecue, weekly housekeeping & a hot tub none of which are actually available). I also noticed people complaining in their reviews that there was no storage for long stays, so asked if there was any storage for clothing in the bedroom & was told no. I asked if it was possible to get a small chest of drawers for the bedroom & even offered to bring one & bedside lamps with me (no table lamps in either bedroom or lounge room).

After emailing repeatedly & waiting weeks for a reply, I was eventually sent an invoice for $3500 from a cleaning company & was told this was because Gingerbread Haus does not have credit card payment facilities. This seemed strange from a company who say "Our team manage houses and homes to ensure people from all over the world are excited not just with their investment returns but with the quality of their accommodation". After asking politely numerous times for a reply, I finally got a rude message saying yes, they got my emails, but I haven't paid the cleaning invoice yet & it is going to cost $80 each for drawers in the bedroom. This was rather a shock because their website had assured me "By providing essential communication to both guests and owners we deliver on our promises daily." I asked politely again for the rental agreement & even suggested if they were too busy, they could simply amend the cleaning invoice to state the service was for accommodation. I then received another curt message saying they have "decided they will make more money on the air bnb platform booking with multiple guests".

The lesson learned is that contrary to the assurances on their website, a company which wants customers to direct transfer $3,500 into their bank account for a listing where many advertised features such as a hot tub don't exist, then baulk at providing a simple rental agreement (clearly they don't have one like all other professional companies do) or even an invoice with a statement of the services they are professing to supply - is a company NOT TO BE TRUSTED. Either by travellers looking to book accommodation or owners relying on these dodgy people to correctly list their investment property, reply to paying customers in a timely & courteous way, have credit card payment facilities in place, have legal agreements in place with tax invoices which comply with Australian law. Had I sent them a large sum of money they could easily have not provided the accommodation & I would have had no recourse to get my money back. At the very least, these unscrupulous people should not be deliberately wasting the time of a dying single Mum. AIRBNB OWNERS & travellers BEWARE.