Guest Refund Policy

[Keys-2-Joy0]

I have been Hosting/managing 15 rental homes for a long time now and most guest experiences have been

pleasant though, I feel Airbnb has a business model that greatly favors guests when there is an issue.

A guest checked in and 1 day later mentioned that the cleaning was not up to her standards, found 1 bug and

a so-called tiny 2 inch lizard under the bed. People in Florida know that any house can have a bug and gecko at times.

It is the nature of where we live.

The guest messaged airbnb asking for her cleaning fee returned, of which I sent her about 75% of the cleaning fee.

She seemed satisfied but said she preferred all of the cleaning fee returned($40 more)and said she had a wonderful time for her 7 night stay and the cleaning was the only issue in the house.

Well i thought that was the end of it.

Airbnb people messaged me and said that the "vermin", 1 bug and 1 tiny lizard that can be found in any house in Florida was enough for them to issue the guest a 50% rent refund plus full cleaning fee for their stay! 

Is there anyone that thinks this is fair?

So the guest had a wonderful time and thanked me, then got 50% refunded plus all of the cleaning fee refunded.

I am hoping for a new company to emerge that can get the exposure airbnb has so I can switch.

Gregg

[Anonymous]

@Keys-2-Joy0   I don't know how much this would influence Airbnb's decision on matters like this (and I agree, taking back 50% of your rent was appalling) but you could try adding a disclosure about encounters with local fauna to your House Rules text. This ensures that guests will have had to agree to it in the booking process (though not all of them actually read it). 

[Sarah977]

@Keys-2-Joy0  There's a ton of bugs where I live- no way a guest might not see an ant or a lizard (in fact my walls are full of geckos at night) or any one of the thousands of insects that are endemic here. It's ludicrous for people to book somewhere without understanding the nature of the area in terms of wildlife and climate. It would be like booking a place in the heart of a big city and then complaining about traffic noise. 

 Because I home share, I'm able to mention such things to guests when they arrive, which I do casually, as if it's no big deal, in the course of showing them where the light switches are, where things are kept in the kitchen, etc.

 There's a particularly large and horrendous looking insect we have in my area that is in fact harmless and I even have a ded one in a jar to show guests so they know there is no need to freak out if they happen to run across one. Because I treat the whole thing casually and humorously, none of my guests has had any issues about it- one guest asked me to remove a spider that was on the ceiling above her bed, which I did, and she was fine with that. But I know there are people who are total insect-phobes. Those people just shouldn't travel to places that are tropical.

In the case of an entire home, with, I assume self-check-in, I think you should mention it in your listing info as well as in messages to guests when they first book. State that no refunds will be given because of guests happening to see a bug or a lizard that are endemic to the area- that they are quite common everywhere and have nothing to do with the cleanliness of a listing.

[Huma0]

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@Sarah977 wrote:

It would be like booking a place in the heart of a big city and then complaining about traffic noise. 

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Ah, but @Sarah977 . This happens as well. I live in a busy, urban area and my listing mentions I am on a busy road and that the rooms facing that road are not suitable for light sleepers. You still then get guests complaining about it, e.g.

- Couple from somewhere remote in Texas  complained that while noise was not an issue, the street was too 'lively'. Well, of course it's going to be lively compared to what they described as their cabin in the woods with bears coming up to the porch, but there are no shops/bars/restaurants in sight or earshot of the house, just cars and pedestrians passing by.

- Conversely, a girl from Alexandria in Egypt, where she had it was busy and noisy 24/7, complained that my street was so quiet that she found it spooky and it freaked her out.

By all means, people should complain if the listing is not as described but why do people travel when they expect everything to be just like home?

[Sarah977]

@Huma0  Yes, I know they complain about noise and traffic even if they've booked in the heart of a busy city- and complain about heat when they book a place in the hot, humid tropics, and cold when they book a place in a cold, dreary northern climate-  it's ludicrous.

The people who travel who expect everything to be like home should stick to chain hotels, and eat at McDonald's, which look and function almost exactly the same everywhere in the world. Then there won't be any annoying surprises for them. 

[Huma0]

@Sarah977 

My all time favourites were the couple who, amongst other things, complained that:

- I did not have a stove top espresso maker like they had at home. I have a coffee machine and a caffetiere/French press, but the latter was apparently 'dangerous'.

- Used a whole bag of sugar (white) in two days then refused to use the brown sugar, not because they didn't like brown sugar, but because 'sugar should be white, not brown'. They did not thank me when I ran out at 11pm to buy them more white sugar.

- Said it was ridiculous that I did not have a waste disposal unit in the sink. I have lived in the UK for over 40 years and never seen a home here with one of those.

- Said the light switches for the hallways should be located in their bedroom and that, because they were not, the lights must be left on overnight.

These are just a few examples of this couple from hell (you might remember me posting about them previously). I really don't know how I put up with them for eight days.

[Sarah977]

@Huma0  Hosts deserve a medal for putting up with the brain-dead who see nothing whatsoever wrong with expecting the world to conform to their standards of what is proper.

Never mind the Superhost badge, we should get "I survived this clueless guest for XX days" badges.

[Cave0]

It's amusing that Airbnb, that great company which helps people from all over the world find places to stay all over the world hasn't got a lot of common sense when it comes down to the crunch.  I have had customer service people on the phone whilst in the background kids have been screaming, cows have been lowing and so on and so forth.

These people are basically call centre staff working from home and one has to wonder if, in fact they ever left their homes given the answers they give to host questions or situations which arise.

There's no common sense applied any more, your "case" is escalated to someone to whom you can't speak, they refuse to transfer the call, it takes 4 days or more for them to respond and you're left holding the baby all of this time.

It's a sad state of affairs and whilst I accept that some people might not like the Gecko, they exist all over the Mediterranean, as do ants and other creatures and people electing to travel to these locations ought expect this.

If they don't there's not much you can do unfortunately, I have had issues with ants making for food discarded by guests despite being them being warned about it, I am afraid that sometimes, you just have to take it on the chin because one thing is for sure, Airbnb isn't going to provide any common sense support for you once the guest has screamed "there's vermin in the bedroom". 

Even though a Gecko isn't technically vermin 🙂

[Trevor243]

Since the reopening after 3 months of lockdown, we've had a flurry of guests from AirBnB. Along with that comes the nitpicking and complaints that seem to come only from AirBnB guests.

One complained that pools were not open - we don't provide the pools and in any case, pools were closed by the Government, not by us. He also complained that the wifi on the site (not provided by us) didn't allow 9 devices to be connected. He broke the cooker - our fault apparently - and listed a big string of things that I know were simply not true.

Another AirBnB guest completely trashed a property - it took 12 hours of extra cleaning to get the ground in food out of the carpet, curtains, furniture, ironing board etc and a bedroom needs repainting. The property owner is livid.

Another is complaining that a property has had dogs in - it certainly hasn't - and we've just had a string of 10/10 reviews of that property from Booking.com guests.

Over the next few weeks, I expect things will settle down and we'll be back to normal with AirBnB providing only 10% of the bookings and far fewer nonsense complaints .....

[Maria-Del-Mar5]

@Keys-2-Joy0 Yes, it has happened to us as well and Airbnb decided to refund the guests for 50% of their stay. More and more guests know about these refund policies and they are taking advantage of them to get free or half-price holidays. Airbnb always sides with the guest and it doesn't even take into account the host's ratings. I really like the platform and most of the guests have been very nice people. I  am just worried that this type of scams are becoming more common and I wish there was a better way to protect hosts. The only thing we could do is to cancel the instant booking feature so that we can filter out questionable bookings.