Impossible guest

[Mark105]

Hello hive!

I’ve been hosting for a while and a Superhost 22 times in a row. It’s been hard work, but rewarding. 

Currently, we have a guest in house on day 13 of a 32 day booking. So far I have received 68 messages from her. It started shortly after booking. The messages are always “concerning.” At first, before arrival , she was concerned, 5 times and starting 5 weeks before arrival, about the air quality from fires 300 miles away. Then, after arrival she was concerned she didn’t have a dish drainer (we have a dishwasher)  a coffee grinder, hangers and a full length mirror.  We provided everything she asked for within hours. Soon it progressed into complaints about noise from the vineyards ( it’s harvest and she booked a house next to a vineyard)  refusal to allow us to schedule property maintenance, complaints about flies in the unit (she doesn’t using screen doors). She complained about the google home being disconnected and won’t let us have the speaker to reconnect it. She complains about the ice maker making noise but won’t let us investigate. It took about 10 messages to confirm (and finally cancel) cleaning because she could not commit to a time and date. The list is endless, and now, she claims to be allergic to the redwood bark mulch outside in the garden and she is demanding a refund.  As of tonight, Airbnb is with me on this and not providing a refund. Long winded.. I’ll get to the point. 

She’s going to flame me in her review. I see in her profile that she’s done this previously, and she’s nasty.  A host left a long review detailing similar issues and she jumped into the gutter. ( to be fair, she’s had a lot of great reviews since, but I do suspect hosts are scared of her.) Any advise on leaving a review for her that remains neutral and how to respond professionally to her nastiness? This woman is a challenge  so far, I’ve been successfully professional and “bland.”  I hope I can remain so until she leaves. 

So far, I’m planning this:

overall 3 stars 

 
“Despite an initial friendly interaction, I would not host Natalie again in the future”

Thoughts? 

[Brian2036]

@Mark105 

I’m glad to hear that she’s not getting a refund.

She may have been planning this attempt to get a free stay from the start and, if so, will probably rate you 1* if she is thwarted.

Fortunately that won’t hurt you.

 I hope you rate her the same.

 I think that saying “Guest found it appropriate to make more than 50 complaints before and during her stay, then attempted to obtain a refund due to previously undisclosed allergies. I cannot recommend this guest nor would I host her again” would be a restrained review in this case.

[Mark105]

I really like this. Thank you 

[Sarah977]

@Mark105  68 messages? First of all, you never should have gone and gotten her the things she complained about not having. It's one thing to try to make small accommodations for an appreciative guest, but a guest like this appreciates nothing, and when you acquiesce to their demands, it just causes them to feel they can make more demands and complaints. The appropriate response to a guest like this is "I'm sorry, but that isn't something that we offer, as is evident in our listing information".

I would not let this guest continue to stay. This is a situation where you say "XX, it's obvious that our listing isn't a good fit for you. I would suggest that you look for alternate accommodations that suit your needs as soon as possible and we can shorten this booking."

She's going to leave a bad review anyway, so not catering to her anymore isn't going to change her review.

She's just a high maintenance nutcase, who wants to scam a refund, and if it were me, I'd want to be rid of her ASAP.

Please leave a more informative review than the one you proposed. Other hosts need to be informed of her behavior. Just saying you wouldn't host her again tells me nothing except exactly what it says. And as I don't know you personally, had I not read this account, I would have no idea on what you base your whether to host a guest again or not. 

A guest may be totally unsuited to a home-share listing because they don't respect shared spaces and have poor social skills, and the host would never have them back. But that guest may be fine in a place they have all to themselves. 

That's why it's important to be informative. You certainly don't need to go into all the gritty details in the review, but do say what other hosts need to know in a general, professional way. And FYI, hosts who don't use Instant Book cannot see guest ratings, so giving her 3*s or 1*, does us no good. We rely on your written reviews.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Mark105 Whatever you do you will get a bad review. Best thing to do is bring it here and discuss your response with the likes of @Sarah977 and @Anonymous who will always ensure it is directed at future guests rather than the guest leaving the review. If you are very lucky you will find her review breaks the guidelines but I suspect it will not. Andrew will also have a view on the loss of your Superhost status (if it comes to that).

[Anonymous]

@Mark105   Situation on the ground:  you're not even halfway through a long booking, but it's already beyond repair. It's clear that the guest is unhappy in the situation, and it's making you unhappy too. Forget about the silly badge that Airbnb uses to manipulate us and ask yourself, what would a "Super" host do in this situation? Is being treated like a doormat and running out the clock really how a seasoned pro like yourself would handle this?

The guest knows that she's stuck with a loss due to your cancellation policy if she leaves, so instead she's going to keep on grasping for petty reasons to demand a refund. You still have time to get in front of this by offering to advance her checkout date and refund the unused nights (though you really should have done so at the first inkling that the guest was unhappy with the stay - you lost the upper hand as soon as she started asking about refunds). 

By acquiescing to silly demands early on in the listing, you established the tone that made the guest's subsequent actions very predictable. For all your troubles, you'll only be rewarded with weeks of stress and a bad review. Following @Sarah977 's suggestion would have left you both in a better situation, and even if the guest left a not-great rating, you could have filled her calendar slot with several successful bookings to make up for that dent.

[Mark105]

Hi all, thanks for your informative replies. There are a lot of valid suggestions and yea, I should have shut her down. A bit more info. The listing is a 30 day minimum stay as per regulations. I would have released her and filled dates if I could have.  Prior to her arrival, during her endless “concern” phase, I offered the option to cancel (guest at the time wanted to extend). She refused.  Good news however, she’s leaving Thursday. 

[Brian2036]

@Mark105 

Glad to hear it’s working out. I’m sure you’ll be glad to see the after end of her sailing down the road.

This makes me wonder about what is happening in places where they are already discriminating against STRS.

Have hosts figured out how to legally get around this ?

Clearly you can’t force a guest to stay for 30 days, so if they book for 30, stay for 14, leave by mutual consent and get a 16-day refund, is that OK?

Or are the Hotel Police going to investigate?

[Mark105]

Hi @Brian2036 

Our guest house has a county restriction that limits short term stays less than 30 days.  In the scenario you set up, where a guest books for 30 days and cancels 16 days in, has potential to trigger tax collection and as such, this conversion to a short stay would be a violation and cause a permit review.  In Sonoma County, Airbnb collects and reports taxes for all short stays.  For long stays, Airbnb reports the booking to the County.  As a host, I then have to file a quarterly tax form that validates what Airbnb paid.  For anything over 30 days, I have to file an tax exempt report.   I am sure there are ways around this, I just don't want to risk it.  If somebody books our guest house for 30 days, then we cannot budge on check-out.  Beyond 30 days - no problem.

[Brian2036]

@Mark105 

Well, shoot.

 I should have figured that the tax collectors would be way ahead of me.

If this 30-day legal minimum trend continues most of us are going to be finished.

[Mark116]

@Brian2036  And that is the purpose of the regulations if you ask me...to curtail the STR market or kill it altogether.

In Jersey City, short term rentals became a huge political issue and the city basically did a 180 on welcoming Airbnb and instead instituted major regulations that puts anyone out of business who isn't owner occupied.....because of the claim that STR create a lack of affordable housing.  Even though in our city less than 3% of the housing stock was being used for Airbnb/VRBO...and a large percent of that 3% was luxury high rise condos, so if they banned STR outright it would have a minimal effect on affordable housing.

Certainly in New Jersey if there was any mandate either that we had to rent for 30 days or if there was a cap of 90 days like there is in London, we would pull the listing and either go back to using it ourselves or rent it long term w/a lease.  

Back to @Mark105  issue.  I've seen this again and again on the forum, where the host tries to please the demanding guest and it almost always ends the same:  the guest is never happy.  We only fell for this with our very first guest...they asked for a lock on the bedroom, a wok, a large stock pot, a second bath mat, a couple of things I can't remember and then finally when they asked us for a PORTABLE BIDET?? we said no.  They did leave us a good review, but we realized that saying yes only encourages more asks. 

[Anthony608]

@Mark116- I too had a guest once who wanted us to change the locks on the bedroom.  The room had an internal lock, but she wanted both internal and external so she could lock the room when leaving and specifically said she did not want me (as the host) to have the ability to enter the room.  Then threw in she "expected" a card key type style lock, the same as hotels use.  I was not kind in my review of them and I believe they left me four stars as well.

[Brian2036]

@Anthony608 

I sense a vast pool of ignorance there…

Does she really think hotel staff can’t enter a room with a keycard lock?

[Sarah977]

@Anthony608 Right.  And then if there was a fire in her room or some oother emergency she'd blame you when she all her stuff burnt up before the fire dept. arrived, when you could have doused whatever was on fire in a minute as soon as you saw or smelled some smoke coming out under the door.

Why would anyone book a private room listing if they didn't trust the host not to steal their stuff?

[Anonymous]

@Brian2036  I don't want to derail this very specific topic, but if you happen to live in a community that has been palpably transformed by tourism, you quickly find stories of underregulated STRs becoming such a problem that in the most extreme cases it's a matter of life and death for whole communities. Case in point: https://slate.com/business/2021/10/airbnb-housing-shortage-luxury-vacation-rental-galveston-texas.ht... 

Problem is, those minimum stay requirements are deliberately regressive, and ultimately favor the high-volume owners and property managers. A different policy model could grant a resident homeowner some flexibility to rent their primary home without forcing them into the same business structure as some douchebag who bought a whole bunch up of houses that they don't need. But in the US? Don't make me laugh.