Dear Fellow AirBnb Hosts,
I am writing to see if any of you have had a similarly frustrating and disappointing experience to ours. My partner and I have been renting on AirBnB for almost three years. We've had 99% good experiences, and have always felt reassured by AirBnB's "million dollar insurance for hosts," which comes as a part of being a host. We thought, hey, if any one of these virtual strangers that we meet through the internet robs us blind, we're covered! No worries.
We were dismayed to learn that this insurance plan is essentially a hollow falsehood.
We had a guest stay with us who smoked so much marijuana he ruined the carpet my imbedding an odor that did not dissipate even after professional cleaning and washing the walls. The carpet cleaners said if the smell doesn't go away, we would have to replace the carpet pad and subsequently the carpet. I called Home Depot and got a quote for this, which was around $700.
The next step was submitting a claim through AirBnB.
The first surprise there was -- you cannot submit a claim directly to AirBnB, you have to request this fee from the person who rented. So we requested this money from the renter, whose son was the guest in the room. That renter referred us to our son, who we learned after the fact is mentally unstable, and took this request of funds as a personal offense. He called and left threatening voice messages, wrote a series of angry emails and incessantly texted me at work. He threatened to report my partner to the police for crimes he did not committ, and sent so many insane messages that I ended up filing a police report for harrassment. Not only was that extremely stressful, he also managed to lose two of our house keys, so we became extremely stressed that he would return and gain access to our house.
I called AirBnB and filed a report of the harassment, and took their advice, which was to file a report to the police. AirBnB does not allow you to get them involved in the claim until 72 hours have passed, even if you feel physically unsafe, which I did as soon as possible.
The next surprise was that after you involve them, they do not allow you to submit an insurance claim of any kind, even though I asked them repeatedly to do so. At first, they just said it would be hard to get money out of the guest since there was "no proof" that they committed this damage. I submitted my proof, which was the series of emails and text messages in which the guest admitted to smoking marijuana and offered to pay for the carpet cleaning, but not the replacement.
Then, AirBnB responded with "great news." They were able to get the guest to pay $300 odd dollars. I was glad to hear that, and then asked again how to fill out a claim to have the rest of the cost of the carpet replacement reimbursed by their insurance policy. They then told me that, despite the quote for the fix being $700+ dollars, they thought that "$300" was fair and they would not let me submit a claim nor offer any additional funds.
They did not make any effort to assess the damage, nor the cost of repair, despite the fact that we were threatened repeatedly by the guest, filed several reports, filed a police report, and followed all of their procedures. Oh and, by the way, we never received the $300 they said they retrieved for us, and cannot figure out how to actually get the funds. Great!
My questions are:
Has anyone else tried to submit a claim to AirBnB's "insurance"?
Is this actually a scam that means nothing?
Why did AirBnB express no concern for the fact that the person I hosted through their site was threatening me?
Do you feel safe renting through this website after reading this account?
How long do you think it will be until this becomes a serious legal and safety issue that will eventually threaten the well-being of their billion dollar company?
As you can gather, we are no longer going to be renting through AirBnB, and we hope you seriously consider this account of a series of unforunate events before you continue to rent through them.
Best of luck to you all!
