Hey everyone! Count us in between the people who are leaving AirBNB.
We've been Superhosts for more than a year, but the stress and the money are simply not worth it. Our worst review was a 3 star review, which came from a guest from NYC, who complained about the noise one of our neighbors was doing while installing a new toilet in his apartment. The noise started past 10:00 a.m., and we didn't know of it in advance, so we were unable to warn our guest about it. The guest checked out of the apartment abruptly, even tough the security staff at our building assured us that the noise didn't last longer than 15 minutes. Fortunately, we left this guest a honest review, which in her case, was a harsh review. Evidently, we received the same from her (except for the "honest" part, of course). We have learned the hard way to review guests as honestly as possible.
On another occasion, a guest returned at night to our apartment, while being drunk. He wasn't able to open the building's main entrance with the key we gave him, which worked perfectly fine, but wasn't "drunk proof". We ended up calling the building's security staff at 4 a.m., to ask them to open the door for our drunken buddy.
We've had wonderful guests, but honestly, for us, 1 bad review eclipses 30 good ones, and the AirBNB algorithm seems to "think" the same.
Anyhow, we've decided to quit, and rent our properties the old way, not having to worry about whether we can provide some guest a paper clip, in a timely manner, to change the SIM card on his IPhone (we don't live in the properties we rent, btw, and any adult should be able to solve something as simple as this, by himself, considering our property is located in the middle of every kind of store you can imagine).
On one of our properties we have bookings until the end of April, and we've already blocked May and the upcoming months after it, so we don't receive any more bookings. On our other property, our last booking is in August, but we're considering canceling it, so we can get out of AirBNB as soon as possible. Only a sense of responsibility is stopping us from doing it.
Best to all, folks!
- Mick & Mar