Bad Guests = Too Bad For Hosts

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Julieanna0
Level 10
San Antonio, TX

Bad Guests = Too Bad For Hosts

I have been hosting on Airbnb for about 1 year now and just had the unfortunate experience of asking guests to leave my home.  My home was booked for 2 nights this Memorial Day weekend and my house rules are clear; no parties and all guests staying in my home must be mentioned by name in the initial booking as well as their relationship to the person who booked my home.

 

Long story short, as I have Ring doorbell, I was able to see 4 people entering my home prior to my 3:00 PM checkin time, 5 more people entering my home in the following 2 hours. I tried texting my guest; no response.  I tried calling his phone to inquire as to why there were 9 people in my home instead of 1.  No answer.  At least 7 of the 9 people had backpacks or bags as if they were planning to spend the night.

 

I called Airbnb and was told that I was within my rights to ask everyone to leave as they had clearly violated my house policies, and because my cancellation policy was moderate I would be paid for 1 night as well as my cleaning fee with no penalty against me for cancelling the reservation.  Airbnb did ask me to wait before taking any action while they tried contacting my guest.  Airbnb was not able to contact my guest either.

 

Finally at around 6:00 PM I went over to my house to inquire what was going on as I could not get any response via the app or phone.  I had to BEAT on my front door in order to be heard.  The young man who came to the door was not the person who had booked my home and told me there was no one at my house by my guest's name.  I was momentarily speechless.  I asked several more times and he continued to deny there was anyone by that name in my home.  Finally I said I was going to have to ask him and everyone in the house to leave.  At this time, the man who had booked my house appeared at the door and I was able to ask him and everyone in my home to leave.

 

I contacted Airbnb again to let them know that I had asked my guest and all additional people in my home to leave.  At this time I was transferred to a different department within Airbnb and the representative I spoke with, Aysia, questioned me as to whether or not I really would need to clean my home and said Airbnb would not be compensating me for 1 night's rental fee.  She said, "well, you could have a rule about not wearing shoes in your house and ask everyone to leave because they wore shoes in your home" as if I was the one being completely ridiculous.  I tried to point out that my house rules clearly state no parties and that the names of all guests staying in my home must be mentioned when the person is booking my home.  She told me that if I could provide proof that my home needed to be cleaned, Airbnb would compensate me for my cleaning fee.  I told Aysia that I would not be able to return to my home until the following day in order to assess the condition of my home.

 

What I found when I went back to my home: during the five hours that 9 people were in my home, the bottle of complimentary wine and brownies I leave for my guest(s) had been consumed, both bathrooms/towels had been used, and all beds had been slept in.  The kitchen had been used and trash left.  No one bothered to lock my doors when they left my home, so it was left unlocked overnight and into the next day.

 

I uploaded the pictures proving that my house would have to be cleaned and again asked Airbnb representative Aysia for 1 night to be compensated as well as the cleaning fee as I would not be able to rent my home out over the weekend to someone else.  Aysia said that because the guests didn't actually stay in my home overnight she would not be able to credit me for one night.  However, my guest was refunded the entire amount of his stay while I was left unable to rent my home out or recover any loss of income due to HIS violation of my home policies.  I let Aysia know if all 9 guests had slept in my home overnight, I would have been in violation of my City of San Antonio STR permit as only 2 people per bedroom are allowed.  I have 3 bedrooms.  It made no difference.

 

I am left feeling very unhappy with Airbnb.  In all probability, the guest I had to ask to leave will go on to do this to other hosts as there was no penalty to him whatsoever.  Airbnb has taught this young man that it's perfectly fine to disrespect a host's home policy.  In fact, they refunded his whole fee and offered to find another Airbnb house to stay in.  Airbnb has taught me that they don't care if my house rules are disrespected either. 

 

When I asked Aysia if the first Airbnb representative who told me I would be compensated for 1 nights stay as well as my cleaning fee could be located, I was told that because I didn't have anything in writing from this representative, it would not be honored.   I reminded Aysia that the call was recorded, so surely they could listen to it in order to confirm.  Again, I was told no.

 

I think I am finally understanding why Airbnb is offering $360 for new host referrals.  

 

Although I asked for a supervisor, I was told a callback would be scheduled. I'm still waiting.......

 

It also appears that I am unable to upload any images to this post.  I get this message when I attempt to add images, "Your post has been changed because invalid HTML was found in the message body. The invalid HTML has been removed. Please review the message and submit the message when you are satisfied."

 

Does anyone else hosting on Airbnb also feel that they are biased against hosts?  Or, that bad guests are rewarded for their bad behavior while the host is penalized?

Julieanna
1 Best Answer
Sarah977
Level 10
Sayulita, Mexico

@Julieanna0  A friend of mine who has been hosting for years gave me some really good advice re dealing with Airbnb CS. If you get a clueless, unhelpful rep (why was this Aysia even talking about wearing shoes in the house?- the issue was 9 people staying on a reservation made for 1, the cleaning fee was a minor issue in comparison), you don't continue to engage with them at all. If they start out that way, they'll continue in that fashion, or become even more unhelpful or close the case. You just grit your teeth, say thank you for your time, hang up, and call again, as if it is a new issue. Don't mention you've already spoken to someone else about it. You may have to do this several times until you are lucky enough to get a CS rep who actually understands the issue and is willing to work with you respectfully on it.

Also, although I realize getting guests out ASAP would require a phone call, as it's urgent, phoning seems to be the worst way to contact them- from what I read here, users have their calls dropped, claims that there is no record of any previous conversations, and they almost never seem to call back, despite the assurances that they will. For non-emergency issues, I prefer the messaging function- at least there is a message documentation trail which I can screenshot. And while I haven't used Twitter to contact them, others say that works better, as well, and same, you'd have a trail of messages you could screenshot before they mysteriously disappear.

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80 Replies 80

@Julieanna0   Oh good. Luck of the draw. I hear you about not ever wanting to go through that again. I consider myself very lucky because I get lovely guests,. have never had a complaining refund request, had to cancel a guest, had to ask for damage payment, nor gotten a retaliatory review.  I've only had a couple of issues with guests and dealt with it in the moment without involving Airbnb, and in such a way that there were no hard feelings or nasty reviews. 

So the only things I've ever had to contact CS about are tech issues and few other things, none of them super urgent, just irritating. And the responses, which weren't on point at all, required lots of back and forth to get them to understand the issue and finally admit it was due to their glitches, so I can just imagine how frustrated and irate I'd be if I was dealing with some horrid guest or other major issue.

Did u get your cleaning fee Julieanna?

I have also had this problem as well. If you realized 9 people were staying there. You could alter the reservation, take pictures of each of guests if you can. And alter the reservation to include 9 guests.  Speak to Airbnb about it.  Show the proof, and charge the guest.  Also you can charge a security deposit. In the event the guest violates the rules or does damage, you take the security deposit.  

@Joanne63  Unfortunately I couldn't get the truth as to how many people were in my home from any one of the guests that came to the door, much less pictures.  I had to carefully review Ring Doorbell footage to see/verify that there were 9 guests staying in my home.  I couldn't alter the reservation for 9 people as I would have been in violation of my city code.  Your recommendation re a security deposit is interesting,--I wonder if, as hosts, we could enforce the "sneak-in penalty" here or if Airbnb would only allow us to collect the security deposit if there was damage done to the home?  Would be interested to know if anyone has done this.....

Julieanna

I know, obviously it would be difficult to get pictures unless you had security cameras.  And if nothing was damaged, you would not be able to file a claim with Airbnb's insurance.  The idea of a "sneak in" penalty has merit.  It could be charged to a guests credit card after checkout.  Either way, it is good to legally document as much as possible.  It may also scare legitimate guests away to have a security deposit.  I haven't tried that feature yet.

Listening in on your advice!  Only been doing Airbnb since Feb. 2019 and I've had three guests try to bring in extra guests with out making it known.  What is the "sneak-in penalty"? 

 

@Sarah977 @Julieanna0 

It's imperative that hosts screenshot every single conversation they have with CX - the "vanishing support message thread" has become something of an epidemic in recent months. 

 

I had a trio of "glitches" during the week, which caused havoc on my account and led to a head-wrecking few days dealing with CX in the Philippines, trying to get everything sorted out. Interestingly, while the actual discussion between myself and the CX rep is still on the thread - admittedly, there wasn't much on there, because most of our conversation took place on the phone - the screenshots (several of them) that I added illustrating the glitch, now appear to have been stripped out of the thread altogether... 

 

Doesn't matter though, I'd already screenshotted the entire thread. Screenshot_20190630-102811.png

 

David6
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

Send a message to new ‘head of hosts’  Laura chambers . Her job apparently is ‘looking out for hosts

 

with Airbnb that  is just a joke, but worth a try.  

 

You can email  her: Laura.chambers@airbnb.com

 

Everyone  who messages her please we need to create a thread and document how she is responsing. All hosts, please send all your complaints her way. I’ll set up a thread and link it here later 

Thank-you for the information @David6 !

Julieanna

@David6   Back near the end of last year, when Laura appeared, I had some high hopes that she would actually make a difference. At the very least, I was willing to give her a chance. She actually messaged me and said she was doing the same with some other hosts who were quite active here on the forum, to ask if she could phone me to discuss issues. She did phone, we had an hour-long conversation, she seemed quite receptive and agreed with a lot of what I said needed to be addressed. I felt encouraged. Then she messaged me awhile later to say her "team" wanted to ask some hosts if they'd be willing to stress-test some new ideas. I said I'd be happy to participate. All this happened back in Dec/Jan.

Well, never heard another word about the stress-testing, not one of the issues we discussed has been addressed in any way, zero, zip. Almost 6 months later. So I'm not sure what exactly she is being employed for other than damage control. Oh, and she got to take a nice little around the world holiday "listening" to host concerns on our dime.

But I agree- we should all be bombarding her with these issues Airbnb is not addressing.

Valerie56
Level 2
Bristol, United Kingdom

Thank you for this, David, I'll email her. I recently had a spiteful and retaliatory 1 star review after the guest refused to pay for their extravagant use of electricity. The case manager agreed with me that the review was clearly untrue but was powerless to remove it. He did settle the electricity bill, though. 

I have sent feedback to airbnb pointing out their double standards:  host listings are deleted if they provide "fraudulent, false, misleading or deceptive details" and yet guests can make the most outrageous false claims in their retaliatory reviews, and these remain published on airbnb website for all time. 

@Valerie56  CS reps aren't powerless to remove a review, that's total BS. While most will say this, they remove reviews instantly if they mention Airbnb involvement in a dispute, or if they violate the anti-discrimination policy. And some hosts here have reported that they were ultimately successful in getting a lying review removed, but it took exhausting persistence. Most people simply don't have the time or energy or will to be contacting them every day for who knows how long, on the off chance that perhaps they will be able to convince someone to remove the review.

Robin336
Level 8
Norfolk, VA

Because of this 1 star review by thie jerk who snuck in guests I got an email today (1st time in almost 5 years hosting) that my listing was paused??! For ONE week my listing will be hidden! All because HE snuck in guests and is mad he couldnt party with his 7 other friends at 3a?! I'm so ticked off! He's affecting My income + Guests are bullying us out of money and reviews and affecting OUR business and reputation 

@Robin336 I read somewhere today that one host has a "sneak-in" fee of $100 per person.  It is mentioned up front in the listing.  While it probably won't prevent guests from attempting to sneak in additional people, it might help.  

Julieanna

That is an excellent idea! The problem is...will Airbnb enforce it.  That's the concern. I'm going to add that policy!