Thank you! If I am ever headed through El Paso with Rufus, you WILL get a booking request from us, so be warned! 
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…As they should.
Reviews are not about how you feel or felt. They are descriptions of issues or nonissues. But telling people how they affected you will sometimes even get them removed.
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Good reminder Rolf. I will keep that in mind when writing the review I actually post.
How about a review stating both the pros and the cons. Something like: “Quiet and peaceful pet friendly cabin but found the smell of mold to be unpleasant as well as the high iron content of the well water. Opening windows to air out the house was a bit helpful. Host was responsive when approached with concerns and he also tried fixing the issues we had with the Wifi.”
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Very helpful, thank you! Something along those lines will be much more likely to be heeded by future guests and I won’t come off sounding like a cranky old lady! 
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One more point. I agree that the cabin was very substandard. I would not have stayed if everything weren’t rectified promptly.
On arrival, I would have gone next-door immediately to the host’s home and notified her about every one of these points. I would have then followed up with a note on Airbnb to document everything discussed with the host.
The host is at fault here for not ensuring that the cabin was up to par. You are at fault here for not communicating these things immediately and directly with the host.
You are further at fault if you did not enumerate the problems in your review.
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@Keugenia. So, has the host written a review for you yet? What are your current thoughts for your review?
The host, while next door so to speak, lives on a organic farm and had placed notes about not visiting her farm if you have recently been on other farms (which I had).
I did communicate my concerns via text promptly, and when she came by, in person also, about the musty smell, the turbid water, and the Wi-Fi and, in the case of the missing Wi-Fi, repeatedly. The host responded with “let me know if it doesn’t improve.” I could not note these things on the AirBnB platform because I couldn’t access the app due to the lack of internet connectivity. Most of the time I had one bar on my cell phone—enough to get a text out, but not enough to connect with AirBnB.
The smell did fade (thanks to leaving every window in the place open all week), the water did clear up on its own after 2 days and eventually she gave me some Wi-Fi. Her responses fell far short of what I would have done but she did respond and she checked in with me everyday to check on the WiFi situation—not that it did any good 
.
I did not bring up the dirty oven, the broken and uneven porch boards, and the unmown grass. Obviously, she knew about those things and did not think they were a problem. I wasn’t happy about them but I hated the idea of being a difficult PITA guest, complaining about everything. The smell, water, and WiFi were more of an issue for me, and I felt bad enough bringing those things up.
As I mentioned earlier, I was here for my dog’s well being, to keep him from being panicked by the 4th of July noise, and I didn’t have other options for places to stay. Otherwise, I would have canceled the stay and asked AirBnB for a refund on the unused nights.
I still have 8-9 days to leave the review. I have not written it yet. This post is helping me clarify me thoughts about the review and what I wish to say in it.
The host hasn’t reviewed me yet. I’m still turning over the points I want to make and how I want to make them, as well as the star rating I want to give.
If you did not tell the host about these issues and allow them to rectify them within 24 hours you cannot put these problems in your review as per airbnb, not give themlower stars for issues that they were not aware of from you.
Politely disagree. The host clearly never checked the oven as part of their cleaning procedure and doesn’t care about the badly overgrown lawn or lack of wifi, etc.
.
Simply a bad host. Guests need to know and it is unfortunate that prior guests did not give anything remotely close to honest reviews.
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There is no way they weren’t aware of the overgrown grass & shrubs, the broken boards (which they covered with a coir door mat), and the filthy oven. After I checked out, I realized I had left a cookie sheet I used in the oven with used foil on it. I called the host to apologize for forgetting to remove it from the oven and wash it. She said she was so glad I told her because she probably would have missed it!
This was the “lawn” on the side of the cabin outside my bedroom window.
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If YOU did not mention that what they gave you was not what they promised, like cleanliness, if you do not tell them “oven is dirty” “boards are broken” and give them 24 hours to rectify it, then you cannot ‘bring it up’ after you leave. Airbnb will tell you that if you did not give them a chance to fix, you cannot review it or ask for $$$sss.
And here’s the backyard. You can see why I might be worried about ticks.
Look, it’s a cabin. In the boonies in the mountains of West Virginia. I expected rustic. But dirty and not maintained? No. I was not expecting that.
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Yes, you are correct. I was not intending to mention those things in the review. But there is no way the hosts were not aware of these issues. Here’s a crop of the exterior of the place as shown in the listing. Notice the short grass? They are well aware the cabin doesn’t look like what they show In the listing photos. I don’t intend to mention that in the public review though, because I did not bring it up with them while I was there.
I know, as hosts, I try to show my listings in a good light, but I try hard to make sure the photos are an accurate representation of what the guests will encounter.
This picture of the grounds doesn’t even come close to what I experienced.
To the hosts, all is well. They probably think, for example, that you are ‘over the top’ mentioning the grass not being cut - to them, the place was ‘guest ready’.
THAT is why you have to be honest in your review. Complaining here how the hosts ‘should have known’ the place was not clean enough for you is just after-the-fact- bitching and should not enter into your review.
Best thing you can do for those hosts is to review them honestly. It may cause big problems with their listing, but sometimes lessons are learned the hard way…
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Filthy oven is a fact. It is irrelevant that the guest did not inform the host within 24 hours of it. It is a failing of the host, who clearly did not merely “miss it” for their last cleaning but probably hadn’t cleaned it in weeks or months. Perfectly fair to call it out in a review.
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A guest can walk in and find a dirty stove. If they inform the host and the host does not deal with it, then the host is at fault and that is reviewable. If they inform the host and the host fixes the issue, then the host is to be commended and the review can praise the host for the fix. If they do not inform the host about an easily fixable issue, then it is the guest that is at fault, and bitching about it later as ‘obvious’ is disingenuous.
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