Okay, I'm not sure anyone here will have any answers for me but I've been trying to get in touch with someone from the resolutions team for most of the past week. Several emails remain unreturned - and three days running I've called support and been told "I can't help you with that but I can leave a note to have someone call you asap" and well, here we are.
Long story short - A guest dragged a couch back and forth across a large living room, and has managed to put extensive scratches in the floorboards - as anyone who has experienced this will attest to this being a costly and frustrating repair process.
Either way, this isn't my first rodeo and after having a difficult time with damage claims in the past if we couldn't prove without any doubt whatsoever the guest caused the damage we now have some pretty robust procedures in place. Video walk through condition reports conducted before and after each stay have been a gamechanger.
However the case manager for this issue emailed me after the guest refused to accept liability, saying they don't think the floor is scratched but instead has drops of paint on it (weird theory but okay, maybe some bad AI image recognition stuff going on?) and they've asked for a laundry list of things to substantiate the claim - including but not limited to time & date stamped videos - great because I have these - but the link they provided just goes back to the original aircover claim - where you can't upload videos. They also asked for a professionally prepared incident report which I have had prepared, and despite emailing it to them with a dropbox link to about 40 photos/videos/quotes/emails from flooring companies/etc, I'm just not hearing anything from them. They also requested some very particular parameters that they wanted the flooring company to quote on - I was basically laughed out of the room when I conveyed these requests to the different companies I called for advice.
Either way, I've had two independent companies verify that given the extent of the damage and that the only real option is to sand the floor for the whole room and polish the floors again.
The guest responsible for the damage is also listed as an airbnb host - so I suspect that the resolutions team have a better than usual chance of recovering costs from her.
Anyway - TDLR:
- Does anyone here know of a better way to get a reply from the resolutions team?
- I've compiled all the evidence and information they've asked for that leaves no doubt that the property was undamaged at check in, and was damaged at check out - but can't upload this via their provided link - I provided stills from the video in the original claim but they still request video - any suggestions?
- I have an 11 page incident report detailing the whole thing - but nobody to actually look at it.
- Is it normal to have a nearly impossible list of demands to meet for an aircover claim beyond evidence to support that
a) Did damage occur? b) Did the guest cause the damage? c) How much will it cost to repair/replace the damage?
Thanks in advance, any advice is appreciated.
