Broken knife.

[Alex75]

Hi there,

I am new to the hosting thing and decided to let my place out when me and my wife went away to get married in the U.S.  Foolishly I let my knife out for the people who where staying at the house to use.  It cost me £110 and was only 6 months old and was in perfect condition.  When i returned home after my trip i found that it had been badly damaged.  I spoke with the two people that stayed in my house and they said they would pay £35 each and wont pay anymore.  I am not happy as they stayed at mine for an extra night with no extra charge what should i do?

[Donna15]

@Alex75, it's an unfortunate incident, but given that the knife was already 6 months old, an offer of 70 GBP might seem to be reasonable. You could, I think, escalate the process by going to the Resolution Center, but maybe the simpler/wiser choice is to take the amount offered, and look at this as an AirBnB learning experience. One thing that new - and even experienced - hosts are always advised is not to leave out anything of value that could be damaged or stolen. 

I'm more concerned, actually, as to how your guests were able to stay an extra night at no cost. I presume this was arranged outside of AirBnB, which means you wouldn't have had coverage for that period if anything disastrous had happened. Seems to me you got off lightly with only a damaged knife and the offer of partial reimbursement.

I note that you have no Security Deposit required, and have very generic House Rules. I strongly recommend having a Security Depost, as you can claim against it for damages by future guests. I also recommed creating a very firm and no-nonsense set of House Rules. 

In any case, perhaps other hosts here will advise you differently with regard to the knife.

But don't be discouraged about hosting. Once you set up the boundaries and put certain measures in place, it's a lot of fun. 🙂

[Dionne2]

Hi Alex,

Gawd I feel your pain. I had a guest once steal my bedsheets, a teaspoon, broke my wine glass and my blender jug. What I did was claimed in on their deposit , unfortunately there is a downside to that as no matter what you need to do to justify the costings to replace the damage, it does come down to how far they are willing to replace it and if nothing can be resolved you can ask airbnb to mediate which means their word is final. In the end I got perhaps only 80% of what should be claimed.

I would suggest you escalting the issue to airbnb and claim the full price through the airbnb host gurantee. Furthermore, they do owe you that extra night and airbnb can help you with that. Should the issue be urgent ,airbnb representatives will contact you personally.

From my experience, (which may differ to every other host), I would contact airbnb , do use your desktop as not all options are available on the mobile and have evidence. In your case, the extra unpaid night and the damage knife. Which means photographic evidence, pictures of a replacement price etc etc,  I would press on in getting the guests to pay the full amount and the extra night.

Don't let the guests bully you into submission and don't forget to leave a honest review on this guest. It helps us all as hosts when a guest behaves badly.

hope this helps