How to write review after extortion attempt

[Pam116]

Newbie on Airbnb, yet long time vacation rental host.  My guest tried to extort a full refund after his group was in our house long enough to dirty dishes, take a shower, and leave a messy kitchen. Airbnb resolution center came to agreement with me to refund one night of the two night stay.  He did not like our shower area (separate in the laundry room rather than in the full bathroom), he did not like that our housekeeping service left towels drying in the dryer, even though there were numerous other clean, folded towels available on the shelves, and he embelished about how horrible our sheets are.  We have one set of relatively new sheets for every bed (less than 2 years old, good quality) and extra sheets for each bed, older yet clean.  There are a few clorox droplet stains on a few of the sheets.  He claimed horribly stained, urine etc etc 

Anyway,  my biggest concern was the extortion, which I did report and Airbnb resolved.  They said they also mentioned to the guest that Airbnb homes are not like hotels.  I think that might have been in regards to us not haveing stiff, bright white sheets on all the beds, not sure.  

I need to get my review on him done tonight. I know, I procrastinated.  I do feel the host community needs to know about the extortion attempt so here is my attempt at a review:

Thumbs down and this "This guest was not a good fit for our property. We feel he might be more comfortable staying in a motel. We now both should have a good understanding of how the Airbnb handles a threat of a bad review if a full refund is not given."

2 start on communication and 4 stars on cleanliness and rules following.

ANY input will be appreciated.

Now my dilema is do I do a review at all but I know as a host I would like to know if a guest is a person who goes the extortion route.

Thanks in advance!

[Farah1]

@Pam116 I think I agree with your review the way it is. I am surprised that Airbnb still allows the review to be written.

[Pam116]

Thank you Farah.  I don't know if the guest will do a review.  Airbnb I believe may allow it but there will be a process for me to have them remove it.  I believe they have flagged the guests profile to see if he does this type of thing again.

I have done some pretty exhaustive searching for wording on a review for an extortion attempt and did not find much.  I appreciate your feedback.  It looks like you have been involved quite well for awhile.

[Marzena4]

@Pam116 I would add that part of the attempted refund...

[Pam116]

@Marzena4 Thank you Marzena.  I appreciate your comment.  I did put in the part about the attempted refund.  That was actually the part that bothered me the most.  My other guest reviews and ratings will let guests know what our house is like and now other hosts will know about a potential problem with the guest who tried to get all his money back after using our home.

[Cormac0]

@Pam0

I would add, "that the guest rather amusingly found so many faults with my property I was not surprised he was demanding all his money back", if I read that as a Host, I would not touch him/her with a barge pole.

Regards

Cormac

The Explorer's Club Krakow III

[Pam116]

@Cormac0  Excellent idea Cormac.  I added most of that to my review of our guest.  I didn't think about it but he definitely was on a fault finding rant.  Our home is not a high end home but we do not advertise it as such, it is priced accordingly and our photos show the age of the home.  I will be adding more photos, especially of the separate shower.  With one full bathroom available the fact that the shower is in a separate room to me is not "terrible", just different.  Anyway, thank you for taking the time to comment.

[Parks-Edge0]

I have found after 3 years of doing an Inn of 5 self contained suites, that you will never please everyone all the time, despite the photos and communication for your guest to understand what they are getting for accommodation.  I have convinced myself that if 90% or above of my reviews are over the top good, I tend to ignore the odd quirky person who can't be satisfied. I have occasionaly returned monies to guests I know didn't deserve to get it back to hopefully soften the blow of their biased review. It usually works. If I as a public member were looking for accommodation on Airbnb and read reviews, I would be tempted to ignore the odd one or two guests who leave negative feedback and book anyway. I had this happen on Booking.com with a guest, who broke every rule, arrived extremely late, wanted use of the Inn washing machine/dryer, which normally is not allowed for guest use, took the cheapest room in the house and over crammed it with people and then had the audacity to say my Inn was falling down and would be surprised if it would pass code. I was steaming to say the least. They ending up making NO difference to my booking quantity on that site from that review and I provided a very precise reply to the guest online, which of course, I have never had a reply to.  Brush it off and move on is the motto.

Dennis

[Pam116]

@Parks-Edge0Good comments Dennis.  I know that we cannot please everyone all the time.  In this case he clearly violated the 'extortion' clause and put in writing to me that he would spill all of his "claims" in a review so everyone knows exactly what they are booking if I did not give him a full refund.  The threat of 'extortion' to use Airbnb's term did not sit well with me.  I can take a lot of negative comments from guests but I will not take lightly the 'threat.'  I explained to the guest in my personal comments to him that as a new guest on Airbnb he will go much further if he gets in touch with hosts about a problem while the problem is happening, not days after they leave and in a threatening way.  I always work with guests who communicate early and often and are actually looking for a resolution rather than simply demanding a full refund after using linens and shower and kitchen and dishes, you get the picture.

My guests can see from our photos and our write up and our pricing that our home is an older home, with older, nearly antique furniture and kid and pet friendly, meaning it is not fancy nor high priced.  It is meant to be enjoyed by people who want to feel comfortable when they bring in sand from a wonderful walk on the beach.  They can let their kids play and cuddle with their dog.  It can though have a very nice romantic feeling to it with the old fashioned high ceilings, wood floors, fireplace and ocean view.  We do take the good with the bad and the other nearly 30 guests we had in the previous two months, did, for the most part leave wonderful hand written notes in our guest book and a few gave great reviews online as well.

I will continue to work towards providing a good guest experience and keep an eye to accurate guest reviews so my fellow hosts know what to expect from guests.  This has been a learning experience for sure and I have enjoyed getting the perspective from other hosts like yourself.  thanks for your comments.

[Patty73]

I recognize that as good advice. Noted. Saved.

You can't always get what you want.

You can't please everyone.

[Levi-Shayna0]

I think the wording of your review is very good. My one bit of advice would be to wait until the guest posts their review, or wait 13 days to post yours. The strategy is simple: the longer you wait, the less likely they are to write a review at all. And with a guest like that, you really don't want them leaving you a review. But you want to leave yours, so you can warn the rest of us hosts about this guest.

Extortion is the worst. Bad guests are the worsts. Refunding a bad guest, and fearing their negative review is the worst. 🙂 

And my last tip is this: it's just one review, and just one guest, out of the umpty-dozen-hundreds you'll host over time, so don't sweat it too much. Don't let them take any more of your time, emotional energy, or typing skills. Water off a duck!

[Pam116]

@Levi-Shayna0  Thanks for your input.  You are correct, water off a duck and the many other, fun and helpful reviews will be more important over time.  I did post my review of that guest but when I did that I found out that he had been allowed to cancel the reservation, even though he used our home.  By his cancelling of the reservation I was not able to post my review of him....

[Patty73]

Hey, I think your approach to this is good enough that I'm saving it, in case I'm faced with the same thing.

[Pam116]

@Patty73 I'm glad you found it useful.  I was able to find some great input on this by reviewing a lot of the community center posts.  

[Rene-and-Zac0]

@Pam116 I have so much empathy for this situation in regard to being extorted. When first starting out, reviews are everything. I was petrified that I would get a bad review. I fully realized the importance of being validated by the positive reviews and I was obsevivly driven to get good reviews. I guess I’ve had a few battles under my belt now and I’ve shifted into more of a ‘ I wish you would ‘ . There are things we screw up and have to make it right with the guest. My last guest asked me to adjust the pool and spa. I didn’t set a stop time for the pool pump and it ran all night. The pump is very very loud in spa mode and when the guest told me it ran all night, instantly I thought ‘ f me’. Without asking, I refunded them $75 on their night stay. Had they been traveling alone, I would have refunded the entire amount of the nights stay. My thinking was they rented a full house and one out of three rooms was an annoyance because of the sound of the pool pump going all night. It was my fault so I had to make it right but things outside of my control simply get an apology. I don’t review guest first and I left them leave a review. If they review me, I review them. Out of over 50 groups hoste since April 2017, I left only one bad review for a guest and that was because they burnt plastic into the stainless steel pans and left weed stems on the bar counter. So being a little more battle savvy now, I take a ‘ we don’t negotiate with terrorist ‘ stance. So if you want to threaten me and talk this craziness about leaving a bad review, ‘ I wish you would’.