Concrete Driveway Damage from a oil leak from a tenant

[Wendellyn0]

Hi all,

We have a current tenant that their vechile leak an oil stain on our clean concrete driveway.  We have it on video and we are not sure if we are to submit a damage claim or send a clean up bill to the tenant.  We can see they tried to clean it with out success on the video.

Good news is they stopped parking in the driveway and are parking on the street now.

Wendellyn and Terry

[Lorna170]

@Wendellyn0  This is between you and the guest.  Oil leaks happen, and the guest has moved their car to the street so they will not further stain your driveway.  Cars leak...AirBnB will not reimburse you for this.

[Wendellyn0]

Thank you so much!

[Miriam245]

I think you should charge the guest for the cleaning of the oil leak damage. Oil leaks are very hard to remove. I think is terrible that this is one cost has to be absorbed by the host.  Airbnb is different than a hotel. We usually only have one space to rent not 100s of rooms and we don't have a crew to fix things on a daily basis. The appearance of our properties is extremely important and having a driveway with oil leaks because of a careless guest is not ok. If I were a guest and arrived at a property where the driveway has a whole bunch of oil leaks, would give me a bad impression.

[Gail911]

Anytime you invite any vehicle onto your driveway an oil leak can happen.  What you've experienced is the potential cost of doing business.

[Helen3]

Sorry @Gail911 that's not a reasonable position. If you follow your logic a host should never charge a guest for any damages they do as they've been invited to stay .

it's the guest's responsibility to fix any oil leaks in their car. They shouldn't have parked on the driveway knowing they had an oil leak and should have notified the host when it happened 

@Wendellyn0 if you want to be reimbursed then follow Airbnb's process for submitting a claim

[Dana1086]

I am not agreeing to this either, Gail.  My last guest stayed nearly a month and splattered all kinds of oil or whatever leaked from her car all over my driveway. A week of scrubbing and hiring power washer with chemical treatments has not repaired my driveway.  It’s bad.  Cement company told me I need to recoat it for $4100.  It’s really made an impact to the look of my front yard and driveway.  Cleaning is $950 so far.

The let stains in my home and urine left to crystallize on my furniture is another issue altogether. 

Just  trying to determine fair cost. She was a nice person and left all tidy overall. I guess she just didn’t think it mattered that my driveway was blemish free until her car.

[Jessica3496]

@Wendellyn0 Curious what you ended up doing here. My guest left and we found a huge oil leak on our driveway - was going to charge the guest but don't expect him to pay. Did you end up submitting a claim? Jessica

[Wendellyn0]

Hello @Jessica3496 

We did not charge and did a second cleaning.

Wendellyn