They were refunded my money after too many people showed up

[Tammy45]

This seems like a case where Airbnb took rent money right out of my pocket! This was a booking that my property could’ve booked on many other formats because it was an annual event and very lucrative.
Most of us have local laws about how many people we can host. Even if it’s not a law host has the right to how many people they want to host on a given night. These could be reasons due to personal preferences could be your plumbing could be your willingness to clean after a large crowd etc.

My house rules clearly state if you show up with more people that you are paying for or that which is legal in my district, you will not be refunded for breaking that rule.

After the guest showed up with more people I told him I had it on camera and that they would have to leave. Local Codes could have removed my permit due to the extra number of people! Well they called Airbnb, and Airbnb gave them a full refund! Not supporting me, A super host who follows the rules and has not had drama in the past with Guests.

I lost a lot of money from that booking through no fault other than a guest breaking the law. It’s similar if somebody smokes pot in the house! That’s against the law here in Nashville. Should I call the police? And risk losing my permit? Threaten the guests with expensive remediation of the smell and let them slam me in a review? What if a neighbor called police and I was arrested for illegal activities on my property?

Should I call Airbnb support? No you’re pretty much held hostage by the guest and they are allowed to do what they want with as many people as they want and they can always be refunded apparently. And they know this!

Last night again a guest allowed more people in overnight then I allow. And I did not mention it to them. I was hostage!  I used to ask them to at least pay the extra eight dollar fee per person. But because of my experience with Airbnb support the last time… I decided not to contact them at all! Or they would have gotten a full refund if they wanted to! And they know this!

Each time this happens I short Airbnb’s stock to make up for my losses. I may start a Reddit Meme Group! 

As you can tell this experience left a very bad taste in my mouth for this booking format.I have lost trust in the partnership entirely. Raising my prices on Airbnb to get less bookings from them. My rental has its “Brand” and it’s clear that the Airbnb Guest has their “Brand” also which is what I’d be focused on in the company. A design group aimed at creating a Brand of Guests.

[Michael5689]

Technically I think you're correct and it sucks that this happened to you, but in practice no policy is executed perfectly unfortunately so we as hosts need to have layers of defenses to prevent bad outcomes.

Up until now, my strategy with too many guests is to wait until they have checked out to raise the issue.  Our home is far away from us and I don't have a good person on-demand call that can stop by the place.  Once with a very large group I did send a message that some neighbors were complaining about too many cars in the driveway so I think that served to put that group on notice a little bit and they were on a bit better behavior.

Also it's good to be VERY careful in discussions with the guest and AirBNB and make sure in no way are you violating their internal privacy otherwise the guest likely will be able to work a refund out of customer support.  In all cases I have gotten the extra money to cover the extra guests that I had on exterior cameras, and in all but one case the renter themselves paid the requested money (AirBNB covered in that instance where the guest went MIA.)

For 1-2 over the limit I may not mention it specifically in the text of the user reviews and just ding them on following house rules and check "would not host again", but when it gets to be more than that then I do mention it but wait until just before the review period expires to write the review if the guest hasn't reviewed me yet.  Sometimes you have to bite the bullet on a bad review if it improves the overall community of hosts and guests.  Just be very careful in what you say in communication with the guest and AirBNB to not suggest in any way you are violating their privacy.

Also, you may want to mention the MAX guest limit in your description.  Sometimes I have it near the top of my description and sometimes near the bottom.  I tend to move it around depending on how many over the max limit number of inquiries I get.  Either way it won't keep people from booking with more guests than the max, but it will scare a certain amount of them away.  I also explicitly restate in my short initial engagement email with guests that the maximum number of adults+children in the listing AND that I monitor the external webcams to verify check-in number.  I'd say 15% of guests disappear and/or cancel their instant book shortly after my initial engagement email without even responding to me so I think it's a pretty effective tool as well to limit the problem.  I also tell people I will be cancelling their booking within 24 hours if I don't get a confirmation that they are ok with the house rules and have done that a few times as well.

[Tammy45]

Totally agree. That’s all good for sharing with other Hosts. I do all that but I have not considered cancelling their reservation if I don’t get a response that they are OK with my house rules.

how I wonder would that work now that Airbnb has made it so hard for us to cancel?

[Michael5689]

@Tammy45 In reality I think it's only come to me cancelling an instant book that didn't reply once or twice in the 8ish years I've been doing this.  I am a bit confused on the number of free cancellations and if we still have that 24 hrs of relatively free cancellation after an instant book.  I'm pretty clear on the language in my initial outreach to a booked guest and the nice thing about once they are booked is we also have their phone number.  If I don't get a reply through the AirBNB app I cut and paste exactly the same message into a direct text message to their phone number usually with a warning that I will be forced to cancel if I don't hear back from them in the next X hours.  I think that may be part of why it works almost every time. 

[Tammy45]

Michael, and all others, I should add that a few friends with rentals have been forced to refund guests who simply claim that “the host entered the premises”. 
Airbnb bookers seem to look these scams up and discover how to get a full refund with a lie and no evidence even if the host was out of town! They simply tell  “Support” the host entered while they were gone and boom instant refund. And they know this .

The Hosts I speak of are like me, former landlords completely aware of laws around this issue and no way would enter a rental! One of them was out of state when the guest claimed she entered and still had no support dispite no record for years of previous complaints.  The “Guest” was a first time booker. So who got support? The well established host who was out of town or the first time guest who looked up the scam on the internet or word of mouth. 

[Michael5689]

@Tammy45 Yeah, I've definitely seen some hints of that bad customer service behavior on the boards here.  To try and counteract it, I've made my disclosures of cameras quite clear in the text of the listing and that my internal cameras are even on swivels that I turn them toward the wall before turning them off before guests arrive.  Definitely now that I've seen some of these customer service interactions I've made it clear every time I talk about something amiss at the property I make sure it explicitly talks about seeing it on the external camera or after the guest checks out and I turn cameras back on inside.  If I want to complain about something internal to the house I always wait until the cleaning crew reports it to me...even if say I saw someone walk in the front door and it looked like they were still smoking a cigarette I won't mention it and will wait for the smoking smell report from the cleaners.

That being said it sure does seem like even some experienced hosts are getting tripped up by some pretty bad customer service decisions.  I understand AirBNB wants to seem to be responsive and decisive to their guests, but it seems like they really could use an extra level of review or checkbox on the flowchart they give to customer service people before they refund an amount X or greater.  The immediate suspensions based on one customer report seem to be excessive in some cases.

I will say I think I see some pretty bad host behavior on these boards too sometimes so some of the complaining posts seem like hosts did cross a line and probably brought AirBNB coming down hard on themselves a bit.  I'm not saying that's the case with you though.

I was lucky with my latest guests+ that they didn't ever respond to customer support at all about the resolution request.  That made it easier because I got to be the first one to talk to customer support and frame the problem as a "practically a party" so that made my resolution easier I think.  I was very careful in my wording on the initial request for subsequent payment to the guest, but I still wonder what would have happened if the guest had gone on the offensive and picked the "right" buzzwords and reached out to customer service then.  I can understand AirBNB's strategic decision to tilt a bit towards guests perspective, but I think the pendulum needs to swing a bit back toward hosts right now.

[Mark116]

@Tammy45  Put in your house rules that if there is an emergency issue the host reserves the right to enter the property to address, and although host will make every effort to notify the guest in advance, it cannot be guaranteed for emergency situations including illegal activity.  Something like that.

[Kelly149]

@Tammy45 one date on your calendar had $171/night another $512/night.... at those rates an extra $8 seems kind of pointless. And it has always been true that abb does not believe in penalties/fines for rule breakers. So, the "if you break a rule, we'll kick you out and keep your money" has never been an option.

But to your point, yes support can refund whenever/whatever, so your best move is convincing guests pre-booking that your occupancy numbers are serious both in your messaging and in how you setup the space. If you only want 2 guests then only show them one bed, only have 2 chairs at the table. If you only want 3 guests then don't show them 2 double beds. Etc

It is shocking that guests book a place with an on-site host and then think they'll mange to sneak in extra people

[Tammy45]

Good point on just showing 2 dining chairs!