Ever been burned?

[Sharon1224]

For the first time since I’ve been hosting I got really burned with a bad experience. I have a beautiful lakefront 3/2 home that has had nothing but great guests.

This past week, the guest who had booked for 9 days called and said he wanted to let me know they had checked out 3 days early but not looking for a refund. He asked something about whether I changed the door code between guests, and I said yes, I did...

Struck me right after we hung up what an odd comment. I called my sister (who lives a block away and always helps me clean) to go right over and check the place out and change the code right away.

What she found was despicable and disgusting and only pictures could describe.  Plus it is a non-smoking home and there were cigarette butts in dishwater, candles, and anything else they could find, with other house rules broken as well. Full pot of soup on stove, black filthy towels that even a ton of bleach wouldn’t remove. Trash everywhere!

I called the guest immediately and he admitted he hadn’t stayed there but put his “employees” in there to do a job.  Turns out they try to sell windshields in parking lots, and they were some bums he hired off the street, told to clean up, and put them in new t-shirts.  Honestly, I think they were from the homeless population.

Has this ever happened to you? They guy begged me not to do a review and paid me a portion of the security deposit. 
Because I fear retaliation in a review if I review HIM first, I did not write one. But how do I alert my fellow hosts??

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Sharon1224 If its not too late you review just before the 14 day deadline. Other than that there is no way to alert fellow hosts.

[Anonymous]

@Sharon1224  The only way to alert fellow hosts about a problematic guests is with an honest review. There's not some secret back door for hosts who are skittish about reciprocal reviews. 

When you have evidence that a user violated Airbnb policy by making an undisclosed third-party booking, you can try flagging their account, but there's no guarantee that your report will land on the desk of someone who takes it seriously enough to warrant any action. Don't take any of that "trust and safety" rhetoric seriously - it's just marketing. Airbnb doesn't care who gets into your house as long as the money comes in; it's solely up to you to maintain control of it.

[Heather1086]

I always leave reviews, for every guest... positive and negative. I have had retaliatory reviews and have just learned to not let them get under my skin (which is hard!). I had guests on New Years who left damage and over 200lbs of trash... I just waited until the 14th day of the review period and left the review then.