Dealing with guest who doesn't want to communicate or negotiate.

[Arnaldur0]

Hi all

I had the strangest situation come up.  Typically, guests arriving to my place are asked to contact my mother upon arrival to the country. I of course give them my mothers name and phone number, and I remind them right before the trip that she should be contacted so she can keep track of your travels to the apartment. This has not failed once, except this one time.  

This guest asked for a check in around noon, which is the typical check in, but then at 8.30am when she left the airport, she tried to reach me instead of my mother. Since I live in the US and sleep with my phone on silent I didn´t see anything until in the morning when I woke up. When I reached out to the guest, which was at 12.30pm in my homecountry, the guest had already checked in to a hostel. At that point, the guest refused to go to the apartment which was a block away from the apartment and refused to have any kind of communication with or my mother that were trying to salvage the situation and inviting the guest to stay as scheduled the apartment for the reminder of the trip. 

Since then the guest has not responded to any of my messages, never cancelled the reservation or asked for a refund, and is somewhat is insisting that I pay for the hotel. No response to my multipe efforts of reaching out and offering substantial refund to settle this matter in peace as I care more about a good feedback history than the money. Now the guest has left a bad review despite never seeing the apartment, and is still ignoring my efforts of settling this. 

Is there anything that can be done? I see the review as a revenge despite the failure being on the guests side. At this point I don´t mind giving a full refund, but only if the review can be removed from my profile, and it awknowledged that the guest never stayed at my apartment

I would very much appreciate any feedback I can get on the situation. Does AirBnB step into these situations to correct matters?

thanks

Addi

[Marcus0]

@Arnaldur0 personally i would not have offered any kind of refund until you and the no show guest came to an agreement.

It would seem nothing happened in the two week after departure leading up to the review being left?

Yes Airbnb can act on your behalf, you need to go to the resolution centre on your account.

Has the refund been granted?  If not i would contact airbnb to assist in the matter and hold off immediately on the refund.

Personally i think you are due to keep at least some of the rent.  From what you say the guest did a no show and did not even attempt to re-contact you to quickly resolve the matter.  Basically leaving you out of pocket with an un-rented period.

The review they left leaves little to show what actually went wrong for them and it may have been intentional, a last minute change of plans knowing if they cancelled last minute on you they would have lost half the rent under your cancellation policy, who knows...

Goodluck, you have tried your best with that guest so far.

[Arnaldur0]

@Marcus0,

Thank you very much for your feedback, it's very helpful to get a second thought on the matter since I have never been in this situation.  

Yes, nothing did happen in the following weeks, I didn't get any feedback or actual information to work with from the guest at all, only the one-sided review.

I haven't given any refund, and still no word from the guest. I will contact AirBnB to ask them to act as a mediator of the situation. Does AirBnB remove, what would be considered, unfair review from either party of conflicts like these?

thanks again

Arnaldur

[Ed-and-Hugh0]

Just let Airbnb know that your guest never showed up and did not cancel. Guests are not allowed to leave a review if they did not check in. To prevent this in the future, remove any references to your phone number, so that guests cannot dial the wrong number.