Should I go to the police - dispute over lost keys and locks and a slanderous review

[Victoria1395]

Hi Air BnB community,

I have had an extremely bad experience with a guest. I think I should report it to the police. Advice welcome.

It began with a request to book from "Sharon". Sharon wanted to communicate by email outside of Air BnB. I replied explaining that I was happy to communicate with her through Air BnB but not by email and I accepted her booking request. She didn't follow up with the booking.

A few days later I received an instant booking. This turned out to be a "Sharon Hawkins". This time I received a text direct to my mobile rather than through the app asking if I would be home for check-in. The text was poorly spelt and looked like a scam and so I queried the text by messaging the Sharon Hawkins Air BnB profile. The response came from the first "Sharon" Air BnB profile denying she had text me and claiming she didn't have my number. However, I could see that the number that had text matched the number on the "Sharon Hawkins" profile. Neither Sharon nor Sharon Hawkins had a profile picture. Both profiles joined in May/June 2021 and have 0 reviews.

I found the use of two profiles, the attempts to communicate outside the app and the denial of the text message strange. Air BnB advises that you should not communicate outside the app and advises against a reservation you are not comfortable with (for example lacking profile pictures). I attempted to contact Air BnB. After being passed from person to person, put on hold, and told to call back, an Air BnB Agent finally agreed to contact Sharon to verify the profile.

I was told by the Air BnB Agent that Sharon was the guest's mum, she was 70 and didn't know how to use the internet or the app properly. It would be her daughter and two grandchildren staying at my house. The Agent said that he didn't see any issue with the reservation and if I wanted to cancel I would have to pay the penalties.

I didn't see that I had much of a choice but to go through with the reservation. But decided I would be there for check-in rather than allowing self check-in.

But then they wanted to arrive earlier than my allocated check-in time and so I couldn't be there. Instead I sent them the code for the key safe through Air BnB messaging.

I have a security camera which is motion sensitive and sends notifications to my phone. I could see that they had arrived early and were not able to get in. I could also see that there were two teenage girls, a man, and a woman. Only 3 guests has booked. They didn't attempt to call me and instead stood around arguing and making phone calls. I used the camera talk function to tell them that I had sent the code through the Air BnB app to the mum's profile. They were still not able to get in and I had to hastily drive across the city to let them in. When I got to my house the woman told me her phone had run out of battery and so she couldn't get the code, but I had seen her making calls on her smartphone through my security camera. On the camera footage you can hear them arguing about "not knowing that the code would go to that phone".

I stayed at the property with a friend for a few hours after their arrival to make dinner and finish packing before I went away. In that time I was told that the man would not be staying (which was appropriate since only 3 guests paid for the booking). The children went off to stay with their "father". The man and woman remained and each kept declaring loudly that they were leaving only to return around 10 mins later to collect forgotten keys or forgotten phone - both of them did this separately at least twice. I decided to go and hide in my bedroom with my friend because it was all too strange.

I had shown the woman which 2 rooms were hers and which 2 were private. The doors to the 2 private rooms remained shut and they have large metal clasps and padlocks on them. The doors to the guest rooms are left open. As I was hiding with my friend the man returned to the house came upstairs and started to push my private bedroom door open, it is thick carpet and so you really have to push the door and it moves slowly, I said that there was "someone in the room and it is private" and he kept pushing the door and trying to enter, and so my male friend also said he couldn't come in, only then did he stop and claim he thought the room was his daughter's room (at this point I'm not sure where the children are and whether this man is their father). I didn't think too much of it, it could have been a mistake, although I'm not sure how you mistake doors with padlocks vs open doors. Or why you would keep entering a private room you had been asked not to. He wasn't supposed to be staying in my home anyway.

I went away for the weekend and left them in the house. When I returned to my home 1.5 days later the front door was not locked and only the back door key had been returned. Once again allowing for benefit of the doubt, I sent an Air BnB message and asked where the other door key was. I eventually received a message back claiming that both keys had been left on the table. There are explicit printed instructions to return the keys to the key safe after locking the house, but more worrying was the fact that the key had not been returned and the guest had lied about returning it. I can see from the security camera that they left without trying to lock the door and there was definitely only one key on the table.

I began to think that the guest might be using an elderly woman's identify to run a scam. The whole experience has been very strange, and so I decided to be on the safe side and get my locks changed (for roughly the same cost as I had earnt from the stay). I filed a claim for the cost of changing the locks through the Air BnB dispute resolution service.

I then found that the woman had left a review claiming I had left her on the doorstep in the heat, that the house was filthy, and most shocking of all . . . that her and her two children had walked in on me and my partner naked in the room they thought was theirs. That review is now on my Air BnB profile for all the public to read, it's embarrassing. I have asked Air BnB to remove the review but they are refusing. "Sharon's" profile has been updated with a picture that is definitely not the guest who stayed at my house despite the fact I have reported both profiles to Air BnB.

The whole thing is just so weird. I have done everything I can think of to try and feel safe again but I am a single woman living alone. The man (or "father") lives in the same city, the girls were visiting him, and I am quite sure he knew he should not be barging his way into my private bedroom. I wonder if I ought to report the incident to the police just to be cautious and perhaps try to prevent someone else experiencing something similar. I know the Police are busy and won't have time to investigate but at least there would be a record of what happened.

Air BnB have done nothing to help. I don't expect to get reimbursed for my locks, even though this ought to be fundamental to protecting hosts, but I think it is shocking that they will not remove the review and that they are forcing people to accept suspicious guests that don't match the booking profile.

I have one more booking in August that was made months ago, but after that I really don't see how I can feel safe continuing with Air BnB and I will probably remove my listing.

Should I report it to the police and is there anything else I can do?

[Marissa160]

@Victoria1395  That is great news!! Very happy for you!