Broken amenities: no water, no air conditioning, unusable Wi-Fi — and the one line that decides your refund

It is 39°C (102°F) outside and the listing said air-conditioned. The unit on the wall hums, the display reads 18, and the air coming out of it is warm. You message the host at eleven at night. You sleep on top of the sheets. In the morning you write to support, and the word you use is "unbearable". The reply mentions comfort, the cancellation policy on your rate, and how sorry they are. Nothing moves.

That word is the problem. "Unbearable" describes how the night felt, and how a night felt is the one thing nobody at the other end can check or price. The argument that moves money is narrower and much more boring: the listing advertised air conditioning, the air conditioning did not work, and you said so in writing within hours. That is not a complaint about comfort — it is a gap between the advertised amenity and the room you got, and both Booking.com and Airbnb have written rules about that exact gap. This guide is about staying on the right side of the line: which broken amenities count as misdescription, how to prove an amenity didn't work, and what a fair refund request looks like. None of it is a promise of money back, and none of it is legal advice — it's general information to help you decide what to do next.

An advertised amenity, a basic, or merely hoped for

Almost every argument about a failed stay is really an argument about which of three buckets the broken amenity sits in. Sorting yours before you write a single message is the highest-value minute you will spend.

• An advertised amenity. The amenity was written into the listing you booked — in the amenity list, in the photos, in the listing text, or in the host's own answer in the chat. Air conditioning, Wi-Fi, a washing machine, a pool, a kitchen, parking, a lift. If the amenity isn't there or doesn't function, that's a plain gap between the listing and the room, and it's the strongest of the three. Airbnb's own refund policy for homes spells it out in as many words: a special amenity advertised in the listing that is not present or does not function counts as a reservation issue.
• A basic nobody lists. Nobody writes "running water" into an amenity list, because a room without it isn't a room you can use. Water, electricity, a working toilet, a door that locks, heating in a cold month, a bed you can sleep in — these are owed whether or not anyone typed them out. Airbnb groups them under accommodation that isn't safe, sanitary or habitable; Booking treats a property that can't deliver a usable room as a failure of the stay itself. You don't need the listing to have promised water; you need to show there wasn't any.
• Something merely hoped for. You assumed a top-floor room would cool down overnight. You assumed the Wi-Fi would be quick because everywhere has quick Wi-Fi now. Real disappointment, no promise behind it. This is the bucket where "it was uncomfortable" lives, and it's the weakest of the three — not because your discomfort wasn't real, but because the listing never said otherwise.

That is a first-bucket case wearing third-bucket clothes. The generic replies keep coming because the message reads as a complaint about heat. The same facts, written as "the listing sold this room with air conditioning and the unit does not cool", point straight at a rule the platform has already written down.

One thing this guide doesn't cover: dirt. If what failed is cleanliness rather than an amenity — a room that plainly wasn't cleaned between guests — the reporting habit is identical but the test and the ask are different. Broken amenities are about function; dirt is about care.

The pattern holds on both platforms. The more clearly the listing named the amenity before you paid, the less the conversation depends on your description of how you felt. So the first move is never an angry message — it is opening the listing again and reading what it promised.

Where a listing makes its promise

"Advertised" is broader than most guests think, and this is where a weak-looking case turns out strong. A listing can promise an amenity in any of these places, and all of them count:

• The amenity list. The checkboxes and icons — air conditioning, Wi-Fi, washer, kitchen, free parking. The most literal promise there is.
• The listing photos. A pool in the gallery, a desk with a monitor, a machine visible in the kitchen. Pictures describe a room as much as words do.
• The listing text. The free paragraphs where hosts write "fully air-conditioned throughout" or "fibre broadband, perfect for remote work".
• The room type or rate name. On Booking, "Double Room with Air Conditioning" is not decoration — it is the room you bought, named.
• The chat before you booked. A direct question and a direct answer from the host are part of what you were sold. Most guests forget they have this, and it is often the cleanest evidence in the file.

That guest called it "kind of a small problem". It isn't. A missing washing machine is worth less money than a missing air conditioner, but the case has the same shape, and the host's written confirmation in the chat makes it unusually clean. The question is never how dramatic the failure was — only whether the listing advertised the amenity and whether it worked.

Screenshot the listing the day you find the problem. A listing is editable, and an amenity that quietly disappears from the page while you are still in the room takes your best evidence with it. Capture the full listing, the amenity list, the photos and the chat thread before you send anything.

The uncomfortable middle: heat nobody promised to fix

An honest guide has to name where you have less ground, and heat is the biggest of those places. Summers now run hotter than the buildings were designed for, from Madrid to Marrakesh to Texas, and plenty of hotels and flats have no air conditioning and never claimed to. A listing that clearly said "no air conditioning" delivered exactly what it described, however grim the night was. There is no gap to point at.

That's the honest middle, and it has two narrower ways out. The first is what the listing left out rather than what it promised: no air conditioning and a top-floor room that holds heat all night and windows that don't open. A material fact missing from a listing is misdescription in its own right, separate from any broken amenity. The second is safety rather than comfort — a room that is merely hot is a hard case, but a room hot enough to make someone unwell is a different conversation, and it belongs in writing with the symptoms and times recorded.

Where neither applies, the realistic request is a goodwill one — a different room, a change of dates, a partial credit — and many properties will offer it rather than collect a bad review. Ask for that plainly instead of insisting on a refund you probably won't get.

Wi-Fi you work on is a paid amenity, not a bonus

For a tourist, slow Wi-Fi is an annoyance. For someone who booked six weeks in order to work, the connection is the reason the booking exists — closer to the bed than to the coffee machine. Hosts and platforms still treat it as a nice extra, and that mismatch is why these cases stall.

Three things make a connection case strong, and all three take an afternoon:

• Pin down what the listing promised. A speed-test screenshot, a number in the listing text, or the host's written answer. If the promise came on a call, write it back into the platform's chat now — "you told me the line runs at 100 Mbps, here is what I'm seeing" — so it exists in text.
• Measure repeatedly, with dates. Speed tests morning, afternoon and evening; wired as well as wireless; a dropped-call log. One bad test proves nothing; twenty across four days is a pattern nobody can blame on your laptop.
• Do the obvious fixes and record them. Restart the router, try a cable, ask the host to contact the provider. "The guest tried everything and it still failed" reads far stronger than "the guest complained".

Then ask for the outcome that fits your real problem, because a partial refund does not give you a working office. The honest options are a repair inside a stated few days, ending the booking early without a penalty, or a reduction if you stay and pay for mobile data yourself. Name the one you want — a refund request with a specific outcome in it is much harder to answer with "we're sorry to hear that".

Proving that an amenity didn't work

A broken amenity is harder to evidence than a dirty room. Dirt photographs itself; a failure is the absence of something, and a photo of an air conditioner looks the same whether it cools or not. So capture the effect, not the object:

• Show a reading, not a feeling. A thermometer beside the unit, the thermostat display, a speed test with the time visible, a video of a tap running dry, an error code on the boiler. Numbers travel; adjectives don't.
• Film short clips, not only stills. Ten seconds of warm air on your hand in front of a running unit says more than a paragraph.
• Repeat it across days. One reading is a moment; the same reading on three mornings is the state of the room.
• Keep the message thread in one place. Every report and reply inside the platform's own chat, with times attached. If something was agreed by voice, summarise it back into the chat the same day.
• Keep the receipts the broken amenity forced on you. The hotel you moved to, the mobile data you bought, the laundrette you used because the machine wasn't there.
• Save the listing as it was. Full-page dated screenshots of the amenity list and photos. This is the piece that can vanish.

The listing said air-conditioned and the unit blows warm air. What can I ask for?

Ask for a repair or a move first, in writing, on the first evening — then a partial refund for the nights the air conditioning didn't work, plus the extra cost if you booked a cooler room. Air conditioning that blows warm air is not a comfort complaint; it is an advertised amenity that doesn't function, which is close to the wording both platforms use in their own rules. Film the unit, its display and a thermometer in the room, and keep the dated message you sent.

The Wi-Fi is too slow to work on. Is that a broken amenity or just bad luck?

It depends on what the listing promised. If it said 'fast Wi-Fi', showed a speed-test screenshot, or the host confirmed a figure in the chat before you booked, the connection is an advertised amenity and a connection you cannot work on is that amenity failing. Run dated speed tests at different times of day, wired and wireless, and send them to the host in the platform's chat. If the listing said nothing about speed, you are asking for goodwill rather than pointing at a promise.

Broken before you arrive, and broken halfway through

When the amenity failed changes the fair outcome more than guests expect.

Told before check-in. A message on the drive down saying the dryer is out, the pool is shut or the air conditioning is being replaced next week is not the same as finding it yourself. The listing you paid for changed before you took it up. Ask in writing, right then, for one of two things: to cancel without a charge, or a reduction reflecting the missing amenity. Both are far stronger before check-in — once you arrive and stay, you look like someone who accepted the change.

Failed during the stay. Things break, and a property that repairs a fault quickly has done what it should. The clock starts when you report it. Give them a fair chance — an evening, a morning, an engineer's visit — and keep asking in writing. If the repair never comes, the spoiled nights after your report are the ones to ask about, not the whole booking.

Long stays are their own trap. On monthly bookings the free-cancellation windows are short and the refund rules past them get thin, so a broken amenity you tolerate politely for two weeks becomes one you pay for in full. Air quality is the common version: a flat where cigarette smoke drifts in through a shared ventilation shaft is unusable for some guests and fine for others, which is exactly why it has to be raised in writing on day two, not week three.

The order of events

The sequence below turns a broken amenity into a refund request that is hard to dismiss. Work down it and stop the moment someone says yes — most cases end on the first or second rung.

Writing that one clear message — the dates, the amenity, the evidence, the amount — is the part people put off for weeks. That's the part we can take off your hands: 2refund turns your answers into a request that's yours to send.

What the platforms' own rules already say

You are not inventing an argument here. Both companies wrote the relevant sentence themselves, and quoting their own framing back at them is calmer and more effective than any amount of frustration.

Airbnb treats an advertised amenity that is missing or doesn't function as a reservation issue in its refund policy for homes, alongside accommodation that isn't safe, sanitary or habitable. It asks guests to try the host first, then to report the problem within 72 hours of discovering it, and it can offer a full or partial refund or help you rebook somewhere comparable. That 72-hour window is why a polite "let's talk after checkout" can cost real money.

Booking.com points at the same failure through its own rules:

• Its "How We Work" page covers the moment a stay goes wrong and says a property that gave an inaccurate description of its accommodation and didn't correct it can be acted on (§1K). Advertised air conditioning that blows warm air is exactly that misdescription.
• Its Terms say complaints are recorded identifiably, so an urgent one is prioritised and you can follow it, and they name photos and receipts as the supporting documents that help (A16).
• Guests are asked to report anything broken promptly, before checkout (B4) — a rule in your favour as much as theirs, because it makes a same-day report the expected behaviour rather than an odd one.
• Costs that were a foreseeable result of the failure sit outside the exclusions in its liability clause (A19). Booking a cooler room when yours is unusable is about as foreseeable as it gets.

The host wants to discuss the refund after I check out. Should I wait?

Keep talking, but don't let the written record stop. Put the refund request in the platform's own chat before you leave, naming the date, the amenity and the amount, so a timestamp sits inside your stay. Booking's Terms note that complaints are recorded identifiably so they can be tracked (A16), and Airbnb asks guests to report a problem within 72 hours of finding it. A friendly "let's sort it out after checkout" is fine; a friendly delay that quietly runs past those windows is not.

The everyday rules the small print can't switch off

Above every cancellation policy and every platform condition sit the ordinary consumer rules of the place you are staying in: a paid-for service should match how it was described, and should be carried out with reasonable care. An advertised amenity that isn't there fails the first test; a room with no running water fails the second. Those background rules are what make a proportionate refund a fair thing to ask for rather than a favour to beg for — and a "non-refundable" label never had the power to remove them, because they were never the property's to waive. Booking's own Terms accept the priority of mandatory consumer-protection law (A19, A20). We're not a law firm and won't quote statutes; the network of European Consumer Centres publishes plain-language summaries country by country, and most countries outside Europe have an equivalent consumer body.

The listing said there was no air conditioning and the room is still unbearable. Do I have a case?

A weaker one, and it is fairer to know that early. If the listing disclosed there was no air conditioning, the room matched its description, so the as-described argument is gone. Two narrower routes remain: something material the listing left out (a top-floor room that holds heat all night, a window that doesn't open), or a room that became genuinely unsafe rather than merely hot. Otherwise the realistic request is a goodwill one — another room, a change of dates, a partial credit.

The move that decides these cases is small and it happens in the first hour. Don't argue about how the night felt — open the listing, find the line that promised the amenity, photograph the broken amenity beside it, and put both into one dated message. Broken amenities are one of the few travel problems where the evidence is sitting right there on the listing you booked from, as long as you save it before it changes.

The cases in this article are illustrative composites, not real client records. We build them from the patterns we see again and again across the disputes we help with, because we can’t share real customers’ booking details. The stories are invented; the way they play out is true to our experience.

This article is general information, not legal advice. We’re a self-help tool, not a law firm. Rules, fees and deadlines change and vary by country, so always check the policy attached to your own booking and your local consumer protections.