Dirty, inconsiderate guests

[Robert5698]

Four guests checked out of our Mexico City 3/3 apartment yesterday who left the place quite a mess. We always deliver it spic-and-span clean with welcome packages of fruit and drinks, etc. Garbage left all over, comforters and pillows strewn about on the floor, a spilled sticky liquid (coke?) on the bed/night table/floor, filthy toilets that weren't even flushed, a sink of dirty dishes, dirty shoe-prints on the linen, lights left on throughout, and stains on a new clothes bureau that I'll need to hire a carpenter to repair. How would you handle this? I was thinking of writing a poor review so others can be aware, and to seek reimbursement for the stains repair. But I'm afraid of her leaving a bad review of us in retribution. We only started renting 5 months ago and so far we have several extremely positive reviews. Thanks for any advice.

[Laura2592]

@Robert5698 I probably would just leave a review that reflected my experience. If you do a request for reimbursement for extra cleaning, it will trigger the guests to leave a retaliatory review, and ABB makes hosts jump through many hoops to recover those costs, if they even decide in your favor. Unless furnishings were damaged and need replacement, I would chalk it up to a bad guest experience and leave something like the following:

"So and so were pleasant to communicate with (if true. If not, try to say something positive first.) We were very disappointed with the state our apartment was left in upon check out. Clean up took a significant amount of extra time and there were minor repairs that needed to be made to some of our furnishings. Guests did not follow house rules and were generally not respectful of our space. We sadly cannot recommend them to other hosts."

I would leave below 3 stars in all categories and press the "would not host again" button if you don't want them to book with you in the future. This will also prevent them from doing instant book with other hosts, and they will have to send a request. Guests can't see their own star rating so you can be very honest with that. I would also wait until the review window is about to close to leave the guests your review. Reviews are not published until 14 days or both are left.

[Robert5698]

Thank you very much, Laura. Two followups. How does one know when the window is about to close? And would you reach out directly to the guest first to let them respond and give them any benefit of the doubt? (Or does that then leave you open to a possible bad review?). Btw, the reimbursement I thought of requesting wasn't for the extra cleaning but rather for the furniture damage that I'm going to hire a handyman to fix.

[Colleen253]

 @Robert5698 If you contact the guest or submit a claim for damages before reviews are written, you risk a retaliatory review. But Airbnb recently adjusted the claims process and now allow 14 days to submit a damage claim, regardless of when next guests check in. Unfortunately, that’s still within the review window. 

What you could do is say nothing to the guest, hold your claim, and write the guest review immediately. Hope that they write theirs immediately as well. Then after both reviews are published, submit your claim. If they don’t write you a review, get your claim all ready to go and wait until the review window is almost closed to submit it. You can see when the window will close by going to the conversation thread with the guest. Click the details button and at the top of that window it tells you how much time you have left. Let it get to the last hour or less before proceeding. 

Do be honest of their egregious behavior in your review. You might want to review the guidelines to make sure you don’t violate them and risk having the review removed. 

[Mark116]

@Robert5698  If  you go to the inbox and click on the last message sent to the you should get 3 simultaneous columns, guests listed on the left, the messages exchanged in the middle and on the right column where you are prompted to review it will tell  you XX days and it counts down to the hour and then I think the minutes.  there may be another way to see the countdown time but that is how I do it.

There is no benefit of the doubt to give.  The guests know they left the place full of trash and dirty dishes, so unless your check out instructions don't mention washing dishes and taking out trash, then they already know they didn't follow your rules.  I wouldn't bother contacting them and unless it is a very expensive piece of furniture I wouldn't file for the damage either.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Robert5698 If you leave a review it might (hopefully) lead to the guest reviewing. Then you could put a damage claim within the 14 day period.