An Aweful Experience with Air B&B in Dublin, Ireland

After leaving Germany, we flew to Ireland. Unfortunately, we had a frustrating and frightening experience with the Air B & B which we had booked online a few days ago prior to our arrival. We boarded our flight from Berlin and arrived in Dublin around 11:30pm on a Saturday night.

After we landed in Dublin, we took a taxi- K1579, and arrived at the AirB&B place as per the address confirmed by an email sent to us by the company. Standing outside the apartment building, we pressed the button for Apartment 24. After a few rings, someone answered our call. After he heard that we were looking for an Air B&B, he answered abruptly informing us that his apartment was Apartment #24 but it was not an AB&B. We then told him that that was the information we had received showing that Apt. 24 as an ABNB, then he hung up on us. We were confused fearing that this could be a fraud - someone took our AB&B fees but did not provide us with a place to stay. The time was then past midnight. We could not gain access to the inside of the building. Standing outside the apartment without any shelter and shivering in the cold, we were cold, exhausted, anxious and helpless in a foreign country. To add to this stress of having no place to sleep for the night, my husband just lost his cell phone during our travel. I had my cell phone but landing late in the airport, we were unable to purchase a local SIM card . Therefore, we had no data nor could we use my cell phone to call anywhere. It was a frightening experience for us being alone in the middle of the night in a secluded area where no one could hear our cries for help should some nutcase come, rob or attack us.

Without a cell phone, we were unable to call a cab or Uber, we were nervous as we were not sure what to do next without a tool for finding a hotel for the night as it was almost 1 a.m. Fortunately, a lady resident of the apartment building happened to be going into the building and she was kind enough to let us go inside, out of the cold. She even went with us to Apt. 24 and knocked on the door for about 10 minutes. There was no response. No one answered the door bell. We believed that the resident inside must be sick of our attempts to enter his unit. We thought we had been scammed by someone using the AB&B APP. This kind lady took pity on us, an elderly couple from Canada. Using her own cell phone, she made numerous calls trying to find a hotel for us. The hotels were quite full and the only room she could find was the Gibson Hotel which cost 300 Euros (Can.$ 450.00 )that night. We had no choice but accepted it. She also called a cab to take us there. Because of the kindness of a stranger, we didn’t have to spend our first night on the street of Dublin. We were totally exhausted from this ordeal.

The next morning, we did try to message the host from AirB&B's page, but we kept getting an OOPS message. Since our phone was a Canadian phone, we were unable to contact with the host. Finally, We used the local phone from the hotel and made a call to the AirB&B host. It was then we found out that the apartment number should be 6 instead of 24! Finally we knew what the problem was. Had we been unable to connect with the host, we would have called the Dublin police to report this as a fraud case.