Hey all, I had an unfortunate experience yesterday. I've hardly ever declined a guest, but someone tried to book yesterday for a 7-day stay with a same-day check in. They sent a booking request. When I looked at their profile, I saw that they had just signed up in January, but already had three reviews. The first was fine, but the second and third were both stinkers:
Second: I never got to meet X but communication was easy up to and during his stay. I believe this may have been X's first experience using Airbnb and expectations on how tidy and clean to leave the apartment were not met, specifically the kitchen. Everything else was satisfactory. The kitchen counter was filled with I dirty dishes and full cups of coffee to clean. I do have a dishwasher. All my previous guests have always left my place spotless, even guest staying weeks or months at a time. This may have been a one time occurrence only and I encourage X to be mindful these are not hotels but people’s homes. It also smelled like cigarette smoke when walking in. I don’t mind smoking, but outside. Other than the kitchen mess everything else was fine.
Third: Unfortunately X left the house with a rear door unlocked and a window open in negative temperatures to try and clear the smell after smoking in the house (ashes in the sink also). Otherwise communication was good.
In his message, he claimed that he's respectful of other people's property and that it wasn't cigarette ash but incense ash. Either way, he's clearly not respectful of others' property if he's smoking indoors and leaving a mess, and I thought nope, I'm good with declining this person: I'm not willing to take a chance that someone might smoke inside my home. So I went ahead and declined, saying that I wasn't comfortable. 10 minutes later, I had another booking request from the same guest with the same profile! How does Airbnb not block this from happening? If I'd said the dates weren't available and he chose a new range, I could understand, but I specifically checked that I didn't want to host this person because I wasn't comfortable. I called Airbnb and they told me it would only count as one decline on my stats, but I'm really skeptical. Does anyone else have experience with this scenario?
The Airbnb rep also said that it's possible to block a person again by flagging their account. Does anyone know if this is true? I know it wasn't working for a while there.
Also, even though I have instant book enabled, I couldn't see this guest's star ratings. I am so thankful that the two hosts left honest written reviews because otherwise, I would have walked into this blind.
