I have been of customer of VRBO for 10 years +. I have booked all my rental properties via VRBO over that time period. However, this is the first time I booked a property that has no reviews or rating. (We wanted to stay 1 night in Evora and the options were limited). The check-in process required us to get keys from another house (7 min away), which was ok but the host gave us inaccurate address instructions. I could not reach the host with WhatsApp as he did not share his phone number, thus we had to exchange messages to resolve the situation. In the days prior to arrival, no check-in instructions were provided and I had to follow-up many times with the host to obtain info, which was an inconvenience. But the worst was the cleanliness of the house, clearly, no cleaning was done prior to our arrival and perhaps for a long time considering that the level of dirtiness (stained and dirty toilets, cockroach in the shower, left over food and crumbs on the kitchen table, dirty kitchen sink and counter…)
Also, window shutters did not work in the rooms including the master bedroom, where lighting from street could not be blocked. Considering the cleanliness of the property, we could not relaxed in this property and enjoyed a breakfast or meal in the house and decided to eat out instead.
I understand that the host had to leave to Lisbon the day of our arrival and stated to us that he could not clean himself the apartment and hand over the keys of the house as usual.