Airbnb claim to have a $1m guarantee in place should a guest cause damage to your property while on an Airbnb trip. This is actually a lie and my recent experience with their support on a damages issue only serves to confirm that this company is not interested in helping you sort out problems much at all.
Here's what happened.
I had a guest and his friend stay with me for 4 nights. They were decent enough young guys and caused me no issues. However, on checkout I noticed that somehow they had managed to cause a fairly significant chip in one of the floor tiles in our space. I asked the guest about it on the messaging app and they admitted that their friend had dropped the iron on the floor, which obviously caused the damage.
No problem, I thought. I will get in touch with Airbnb and put in a claim.
Not so simple.
In the meantime another couple had checked in for another 4 night stay, so I couldn't go back into the space, plus I had another guest scheduled to check in soon after them. I did take photos of the damage and sent them through to Airbnb using the support system and asked them what I should do. After a series of "canned" answers telling me to put in a claim on the system I eventually got somebody to acknowledge that I couldn't get a quote to repair the damage because this wasn't a straight forward repair and there were guests currently in the space. How does one estimate what it would cost to repair a tile on a floor and what if it can't be done? What if the entire floor needs to be replaced, since we don't have spare tiles that match lying around (this tiling was probably done about 15 years ago)?
Somebody from Airbnb support eventually emailed me directly and this is what they said:
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I replied advising that I wouldn't be able to access the property while there were still guests in the space and that I would most definitely need more than 5 days to get a quote, given the current bookings (which they must surely have access to see?). This is what followed that email:
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To be honest, I am beyond annoyed with this. It was difficult enough to get a human response the first time around, so now they expect me to go through the same process again but then also tell me that they can't leave the case open "indefinitely" after I specifically asked for a 2 week grace period.
What kind of guarantee are these miscreants actually offering? It appears to me like they just don't care.
Has anybody else experienced something siilar to this?
**[Private conversation removed in line with Community Center Guidelines]
